FILM : ‘Around the World’ Trip Is Packed

When Orson Welles adapted “Around the World in 80 Days” for the stage in 1946, he added circus acts, magic tricks--even, literally, a kitchen sink to let everyone know that no opportunity had been missed.

If Welles was making a statement about all the hoopla going on in Jules Verne’s rambling novel, director Michael Anderson and producer Michael Todd took that statement and added an exclamation point with their 1956 film.

Todd and Anderson’s “Around the World in 80 Days” is an overstuffed, star-crammed affair, but it’s also a sly charmer. Humor, the offhanded British variety, is what makes the movie (being shown Sunday at the Muckenthaler Cultural Center in Fullerton) a diverting adventure: It’s a three-hour travelogue done in comic-book strokes.

David Niven plays fastidious, compulsively English Phileas Fogg, who bets the boys down at the London Reform Club that he can navigate the world in 80 days, a feat unheard of back then in the 1870s.

Fogg is a forward-thinker, Verne’s symbol of a modern society taking advantage of new technology and natural ingenuity.

With his “gentleman’s gentleman” Passpartout (played by Cantinflas, the Mexican cinema’s Charlie Chaplin), Fogg heads out, flying over Europe in a hot-air balloon, stopping in Spain, India, Japan and America along his urgent journey.

Much of the kick comes from Todds’ crowded, colorful cast. This may be the pinnacle of movies for those who love cameos: Charles Boyer, John Carradine, Charles Coburn, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, John Gielgud and Peter Lorre, just to name a few, all have brief jaunts on screen.

The flash-card stargazing reaches its apex when Niven and Cantinflas hit America.

In a dizzying handful of minutes in the Wild West, Todd and Anderson toss out Marlene Dietrich, Frank Sinatra, Jack Oakie, George Raft, Red Skelton, Joe E. Brown and Buster Keaton. Most spend less than 60 seconds in the spotlight.

Don’t be thrown off by the film’s odd and misleading beginning, when Edward R. Murrow, of all people, blows heavy about Verne’s knack for predicting the future, all the while pointing to the glory of scientific achievement. The portentous start has nothing to do with the antics to come.

What: Michael Anderson and Michael Todd’s “Around the World in 80 Days.”

When: Sunday, June 14, at 2 p.m.

Where: The Muckenthaler Cultural Center, 1201 W. Malvern Ave., Fullerton.

Whereabouts: Take the Riverside (91) Freeway to Euclid Street, head north to Malvern, then head west.

Wherewithal: $2 to $4.

Where to Call: (714) 738-6595.