cclennon

First off, i saw this film over a decade ago, so don't expect a full autopsy on how 70's the film was, or the plot holes. Looking back at these reviews, i must say that my memory of the plot is pretty good. Personally, when i saw this film I thought it to be pretty intense. The plot was not entirely bad. Sure it was inplausible that richard harris picked on the one genius killer whale in the whole atlantic. But am i to believe that non-human animals don't have emotions that include vengeance? No, i don't believe that at all. We hairless primates should learn not to ascribe any moderately complex emotion solely under the category "human".

To me, the real strength of this film was its allegory to the destruction of nature. I don't think it entirely inplausible that the writer wanted to symbolize the strife between man's greed, and the annhilation of this planet's animals and ecosystems. The point could have been, that our own planet at some critical point might strike out at us.

And come on you guys, after watching "JAWS" you want killer animal flicks that conform to modern day science? You're telling me that great whites do, in fact, stalk tourist filled beaches as if they were seal colonies? Now look who's living in the 70's.....

peace.

An enjoyable little pee wee sci-fi flick. I caught it on the sci-fi channel when there was nothing else on. Cable does tend to fry one's brain...

I actually didn't have a problem with the giant spider, i found the fact that it was given some mammalian type intelligence to be kinda cool. But those goddamn half centipede, half rat things freaked me out! Not a total waste, much worse has been made (anything with adam sandler).

A total give "homage" to a previous sci fi epic, was the scene where the prof is all cocooned up in the giant spider's web. Can anyone say QUEEN ALIEN???

There must be a certain element, a certain unspoken magic when a particular film gets heaped with such a volume of praise and emotion from its teary eyed and awe-struck audiences. Saving private ryan has, over the years, been one of those films. The peculiar thing is that it doesn't deserve much praise or much of an investment of emotion.

Yes the famous omaha beach sequence is impressive. Limbs are blown off, and men hold in their innards while crying for their mothers, etc. Guess what kiddies, has war ever suggested to be otherwise? Is this one scene enough to pass off the rest of the 2 and a half hours of the film? The answer is no. Just because one scene is technically brilliant, does not mean that somehow the entire film has justifiably earned the right to be called one of the greatest war films of all time. But again and again, whenever i hear this film being discussed, the only scene that comes up is the first 25 minute invasion sequence.

The rest of this film was personally to me, a total wasted opportunity. For one thing, how was it possible for hanks and his 1950's ww2 cliched troupe, to casually stroll through a french field? This early into d-day, the bocage areas around france were still full of threatening german units, long from being reduced. Makes no sense.

The biggest failure of this film was, predictably, its childish portrayal of german troops. Again and again, i cringed at how pathetically inept they acted. That last battle scene was something straight out of a sgt. rock comic. Wave after wave of germans just run into fire, not taking defensive positions until about 2/3 of them are lying dead in the normandy sun. Somehow hanks and his buddies always seemingly dance their way out of oncoming bullets. The machine gunner in the tiger was seemingly to high on hashish to fire at the americans. There is also no way in hell a sticky bomb would take the treads off of a tiger. And why the hell did all the german troops have shaved heads??? Not from the photos i've seen.

But i did love the moral message of the film, and perhaps this is why the american public who loved this film so willingly gave spielberg their hearts. It doesn't matter that this film consisted of a script so simplistic, that it could have been written by a high school sophomore working on a ww2 final essay. Makes no difference. The message we all wanna hear is, America is good, everyone else is bad. We don't do bad things, noooo sirry. We only get into wars to stop tyranny. Well, there are some of us who would contest that...

peace.