Wednesday, March 23, 2011
WATER WATER EVERYWHERE
Today's film was the documentary
This is a beautiful film marred by a superficial script mouthed by the plummy voice of Pierce Bronson. He is Irish but he is trying to sound like a Cambridge don with a stick up his ass.
This film has been "disneyfied" which is not a good thing. Somewhere, outside US distribution, the original film is available but not on Netflix.
The guys who made it are the ones who did the bird movie with the incredible photography that made you say "how did they do it"?
Here the photography is great but not that dramatic. The sea animals are wonderful. But there are limits to underwater photography and so we won't compare. Just enjoy.
If you can get over Pierce and the script which is incoherent.
We get whales, then seals, then little fish, then the ocean floor and then whales again. Then seals. Dolphins? Yes. See them twirl.
Just when there is a point to be made, the narration swims away to see something else.
Maybe our attention span is so short that this is required but not for me.
I was almost to the point of shutting the sound down but then I would miss the wonderful sound effects, both real and simulated, of the creatures that I was seeing. Very good.
But the sound is overwhelmed at times by the overripe musical score. Bring up the violins, the chorus. Yes. A chorus. Of fucking people!
Jesus.
So I wish this was better. I couldn't watch it again. I am sure that there are better films about the ocean somewhere other than this. Maybe the film that the guys made pre-diz.
I would give it a 4 for photography and then poor, plummy, Pierce and his overripe music brings us down again.
I will give it a 3 out of Netflix5. It is pretty good but not nearly as good as it could have been or as it thinks it is.
Labels: films
