Lakeboat

Several things about this movie turned me off. I am Great Lakes Merchant Marine and was excited to hear a movie about a Great Lakes crew was being produced. They picked a Great Vessel (the Canadian flagged Seaway Queen). But although you can't blame the actors (they were working with poor material) Lakeboat gives an unrealistic stereotypical view of merchant seaman. Not only that but there are several inaccuracies in the props. For example one character makes a ship to shore call on the inter ship phone system. While the ship was being unloaded they show crew members using hand trucks to unload boxed cargo, the majority of the ships on the lakes carry bulk cargo. This ignorance to realistic detail bothered me but so did the fact that they painted every sailor as foul mouthed know nothings. I honestly have heard worse language from Jr. High School students then my shipmates. It is just so painfully inaccurate.

I found the movie "Lakeboat" to be a wonderful character driven film! The actors are superb, especially Robert Forster as the world-weary Joe Pitko! An Oscar performance if there ever was one. Some might find the language a bit "salty", but It wasn't gratuitous. Rather it reflects the way regular blue collar guys sometimes relate to each other, guys among guys. Having grown up and spent most of my life in the great-lakes area, I found that it rung true, and I thought it was explained very well to "the new guy" by his cabin mate before the voyage. If you don't mind thinking a bit, and you don't need an explosion every few minutes or huge special effects to keep your attention, I think you'll enjoy this film. It's a nice change of pace from the rat race.

Haven't seen the movie, but saw the play at the Goodman in Chicago years ago. Mamet was uncannily on target; I felt he knew my old crew mates inside and out. Other comments seem to evaluate the movie as entertainment or what they expect of Mamet, or some other side issue. How about evaluating it as TRUTH?! The lakeboats are all gone now. The Mesabi iron ore range in Minnesota is played out and South American steel has virtually killed the US steel industry. The ore boats no longer ply the lakes, and the last one, the Mather, is now a floating museum docked at Cleveland.

So the play catches a piece of American history recorded nowhere else. All that foul language; yep, it's right on! Don't like it? Then you don't like telling it like it is! (Pardon -- like it WAS!). Perhaps the movie has it's faults; I hear they forgot the delay between an engine room signal and the reply/confirmation. But reviewers who focus on the entertainment quality of the movie miss the point: it should be viewed as LIVING HISTORY!! (Alas, of an era now totally dead and gone).

In the Summer of 1950, fresh out of high school, I shipped out as a deckhand on the Samuel F. B. Morse one of the last wooden hatch boats, but got fired the next week because I was to weak to handle the huge wooden hatches. Later I shipped out September 6, 1950, on the Presque Isle, on a run from Cleveland to Escanaba, and stayed for the Fall months. The next Summer is was deckwatch on the James A Farrell.

It's all gone now, and David Mamet's play is the only record I've ever seen of what crew life was really like. Found the movie/play boring? crude? tedious? Right; now you know what life on the lakeboats was really like!!!

I think you probably have to be a huge David Mamet fan to really love this film. I'm not a huge fan, although I also don't hate his works. As for this film, I liked it but didn't love it. The entire film was a character study, and I thought was well done -- mostly. With this cast, I don't think it could go wrong. Robert Forster was fantastic. Some of the humor fell flat for me. Still, I thought it was worth seeing. My grandfather used to work in large ships on the Great Lakes. That's mostly why I rented this film. Although I suspect that his own experiences were not much like this film, it was interesting to me to think that some of them may have been a little bit similar.

Lakeboat doesn't have a plot, so I guess it's more of a character sketch. Like a series of disconnected skits, various characters walk in, fire off some non-sequiturs, and leave. Unfortunately, it's not funny -- at all -- and the pace is slow and boring. Frankly, I couldn't get through it. The lines are somewhat funny but the pacing and the portrayal and the music is all serious.

Speaking of music, it's awful -- I assume it's more nepotism by writer David Mamet since the composer is "Bob Mamet". The film isn't awful, it's more of a "bad"... the only reason I'm upset is that I expect so much more from David Mamet. Maybe I should stop that.

Who should see this film:

-- Nobody, even if you think you might want to. See Bottle Rocket instead, or better yet, The Royal Tenenbaums.

I'll give Lakeboat a disappointing 4 out of 10.