The Pearl

Dear Mr. Zacharias,

Hi! My name is Johnny Sun. I highly respect your work sir, but you put the original, award winning novel The Pearl to shame. The book is known for it's remarkable lessons, and vivid details in which your movie seemed to lack. Your movie had absolutely none of the examples in which he was transforming into an animal. This was one of the most important reasons in the book explaining how greed will lead you to another side of you that awakens when you become selfish and self centered. Another reason that your movie was missing, is the knife he had from the beginning and the one he had encountered on his adventure. In your movie, out of nowhere he gets this long, sharp, and not to mention deadly machete which had taken the place of his working tool. In the book he had a regular knife to open up pearls which was a working tool that signified and complimented Kino's personality and nature. Later on, he upgrades to a machete which signified his inner personality and how the transformation was taking place. Finally, in the end the baby did not die. As much as this pains me to say, the baby should have, no, needed to die. Without the baby's death Kino would not have had a change of heart and an understanding of human nature. Also without the baby's death there would have been absolutely no point in throwing away the pearl. Mr. Zacharias, this movie is not worth 8 million dollars of funding. Many readers of the pearly would agree with me that the movie is terrible, right about now I am beginning to question if you read the book at all or heard a horrible summary from a close friend or family member. Overall this movie was very dissatisfying to readers like me. I hope that this letter has enlightened you and changed your idea about a good movie based on a spectacular book

With Hope,

Johnny Sun

There is something about"springtime for Hitler" about this movie. Script, art direction, acting, lighting, directing, casting were the worst I have ever seen. Tghe rationale here must have been they made a load of dough from investors and kept the money or they were smuggling coke in the dailies....

THe whale in the opening sequence and the actual local on the southern part of the Baja are the only thing of interest in this film

The box well represented in BIG BOLD letters that this is Peter O'Tooles last film role... which may be cause to exhume and see if he committed suicide after viewing this POS

The Pearl is a horrible movie, without a doubt. The actual pearl glows like a 60-watt light bulb. They said the rain was coming, and the rain clouds moved at 60MPH. Horrible portrayal of the movie. Some minor differences in the book, and the movie. The rain was clearly fake, as only one part of the set was being rained on. My English teacher showed this to me and said we are watching a movie, not a good one. The lighting was so dim in some dark seems that it looked like it was filmed in a dark closet, with no one on camera. The budget for this movie seemed a little lax, maybe in the 2,000-10,000 range. The only good actor is the Doctor, and Juan Tomãs. Don't expect anything good from this movie.

Haas as Kino is what makes this so bad. You wouldn't think Steinbeck could be corny, but this film does just that. Dated music. Peasant women with eyeliner and rouge.

The movie was interesting as far as the story goes. Unfortunately, the acting and some of the plot devices which attempted to pull the movie together and to give the viewer some relationship with the characters were so pathetic and contrived that it literally made me laugh. This is the type of movie which would have made a great episode of Mystery Science 2000. Some of the action scenes were embarrassing, the idea that a man and his wife with a newborn child could go trudging through the desert with no provisions. Please, if you watch this, enjoy it as a comedy. Otherwise, you will have to turn it off about 20 or 30 minutes in. I am sure that no one will ever read this review because this movie is so poor I doubt anyone would waste their time like I have.