This is a crazy, delightful mess. Explorers make an effort to go to lands never seen and report back. They try to use every conceivable vehicle to go over mountains, under seas, through outer space, actually visiting the sun (I wonder if they went at night so they wouldn't get burned). There are laughs galore because the stuffed shirt explorers were in no way equipped to do any kind of huge investigation. No matter what horrible things happen to them, getting frozen, blown up, crashing from a hundred miles away, going through the sun, and on and on, they always make their way out. One of the stars of this film is the painted scenery. Melies really liked the jagged edges of the mountains and wacky surreal realms of the outer world.

Anybody who's seen Melies' "A Trip to the Moon" should certainly watch this. It not only surpasses the run time of the earlier film, (resulting in a 20 minute production which was amazing for its time), it is visually astounding and fantastic. Even though Melies had already indulged in multi-scene spectacles by this time, this was without a doubt the "Intolerance" of its day. Visual effects, nice color, beautiful sets...wow.Many people have been calling this a sequel to "A Trip to the Moon" and I can see why they're saying that, because it is yet again a sci-fi topic. Instead of the moon, however, the scientists here go to the sun. There's tons of build-up too. First, they have to build the means of transportation (a train). Then, they go on this huge journey through the Swiss landscape. Then, their car gets busted and they have to spend days in the hospital. Obviously, Melies was more or less padding it out with all this build-up, but with all the action and detail put into each scene, there is plenty to see.Melies obviously had an imagination. Not only had anybody ever gone to the moon by 1902, ANY sort of space travel was unheard of. Thus, even now we realize how utterly impossible it is to go to the sun (through the mouth, no less). But Melies was all about creating the impossible. This movie is such a visual treat that even people today could be entertained.Also, it can be noted a supplemental section to this was made, where Crazyloff manages to recover the equipment lost in the sun by using a gigantic magnet to pull it all back to earth. It is unknown whether this section has survived, as John Frazer claims to have once inspected a print, while Malthete lists the short as lost.

Earth + Space + Waters in 24 minutes (covering possibly 24 hours or 1 day in the movie) can become a calamitous ride and make you neither stand on earth, stay in space or swim in waters; this is what happens in The Impossible Voyage which tries to plant its flag on the Alps, the sun and in the oceans but fails everywhere. Of course there wasn't any flag in the movie; I am talking about the actual success of the film in covering such wide parameters in such a short time.I highly appreciated the efforts put by Georges in A Trip to the Moon, a science-fiction avant-garde film for its time. But here I sensed a buy-one-get-two free offer coming at me and I wasn't happy with either of the three. Why should I watch a group of jubilant men travelling so much? I need a reason here because I am giving 24 minutes for the film; in A Trip to the Moon, which was over in 8 minutes, I got much of the excitement and humor that appeased my appetite. Here, after the starter, the main-menu and the dessert, I became sick because all the three courses were disparate, uneven and highly pointless. Georges could've given a definite plot to the film, for example, three different groups going taking three different routes or something like that, instead of following the same angle of A Trip to the Moon. The story begins the same with a arguments, consternation and discussions between the men and women and also has a similar climax to A Trip in the Moon. We however see a train, a tank, a spacecraft and a submarine this time, and during the voyage to the sun, we actually see the train fly. Throughout the journey the men are cheered by everyone and we see some slapstick humor thrown in with the usual trips and tumbles. And since I saw it in color, I could see the red flames, the white snow and the brown mountains – this somewhat dampens the realistic element, making the background look all the more artificial.Everything here is perfunctorily covered, and Georges again wants more emphasis on special effects, but compromising on the story completely will not make them work. Also, without sound, the journey gets all the more drab and colorless. I wouldn't advise viewers on watching The Impossible Voyage to take a call on Georges' works – watch A Trip to the Moon or The India Rubber Head instead.

Having produced a blockbuster in 1903 in which a group of scientists journeyed to the moon, Melies tried to outdo himself the following year by having another group of manic scientists travel to the sun. He made this film longer and stencilled it in colour, and the outcome is quite astounding. To think that Melies was producing lengthy masterpieces like this while contemporary filmmakers were still experimenting with one-shot narratives goes to show how far ahead of his time Melies really was - which makes his downfall less than a decade later all the sadder. Melies fills the screen with colour with sets sometimes similar to the expressionist sets of the German masterpieces of the late teens and 20s, and fills it also with movement. Not one moment passes when there isn't something to look at. Although this film is not as widely known as Le Voyage dans la lune for my money it surpasses it in terms of exuberance and imagination.