Apparently, Philip Jose Farmer's RIVERWORLD novels involve a fantasy world inhabited by souls of dead famous people. This Sci Fi Channel treatment of the story turns the whole concept into an outlandish B-movie with crushingly dull American characters and cheesy fight choreography. The whole effect is something you'd see in the likes of XENA: WARRIOR PRINCESS instead of a proper, thought-provoking piece of filmmaking.The movie was made and filmed in New Zealand, so picturesque locations are about the only thing this has going for it. Everywhere else the acting is terrible; particularly Emily Lloyd, who has the fakest-sounding voice ever, like she's been dubbed. There's a lot of action here, but it's infantile in the extreme, done by people who have no clue how to stage properly exciting scenes. RIVERWORLD is a bore and barely worth watching, a generic mess no different from a hundred other such productions.

I finally saw this abomination of a TV pilot/movie. I wish I hadn't. 'To Your Scattered Bodies Go' is a novel by Phillip Jose Farmer which won the Hugo Award for best SF novel in 1972. This 'Riverworld' adaptation is a farce and does not do this incredible imaginative book any justice. This is a film that should be remade with all the attention to detail and robustness to how our Earth's history and possible future could be entangled into what I call the world's greatest Anthropological SF experiment of all time. Someone out there in Hollywood-land with some real script writing abilities should read all the books in the series and perhaps write a script that would do it justice. It has the makings of a blockbuster if the right individuals are involved. Anyway read all the books in the series and you will see what I mean. - Cheers

I laughed when I came across this at Amazon. This wasn't a movie and I don't believe it was ever intended to be one. This is a series pilot aired by the SciFi channel but not picked up. It might had made a decent series compared to the drivel normally aired. But there's one thing I've learned about the folks at USA networks. They wouldn't know quality if it dropped on their heads. While this may not be considered top line material it's at least original.So what we have here is what I believe to be the first episode of a series designed to rush through the story and get the characters on the boat so the series could be about their travelsBut we'll never know.

I think this is a very good movie, it has the suspense of wondering what is going to happen to the misfit crew of the steamboat, action aplenty with gladiatorial combat, sword fights and explosions, sci-fi themes with alien overlords and one friendly extra-terrestrial, and a blossoming romance between Hale and Alice. Not to mention the dozens of naked people running around at the first of the movie. And the movie ends with so much more to explain and explore. I think that the producer(s) should seriously consider turning this movie into a TV series, I would definitely watch it and I bet so would others. Maybe Space-The Imagination Station in Canada would be interested in broadcasting the series.