The Pearl

I recently saw this movie in my English class after my reading of the pearl. The novella the Pearl was the influence of this movie. However the movie lacked many of the important symbols and events from the book. Juana's shall was one important symbol in the book. The movie never portrayed this. Also in the movie the doctor was made a major character. In the original story, the doctor was a much smaller character. Hardly any of Stienbeck's imagery was showed either. This destroyed the entire point of the movie and the plot was not preserved. It was a horrible attempt at a recreation of the pearl. I'm sure that if John Steinbeck were alive to see this horrible movie today, He would be ashamed that his work inspired this terrible movie. I do not recommend this movie for any one, especially those who read the book. If you have read this book and seen this movie you probably know the horrible job it did making the book come alive. If you need to read the book for any kind of class this isn't the movie to take the easy way out with. This movie gives the book a bad name.

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 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.

The Pearl, released in 2001, and probably the worst movie of that year. I watched this movie out of curiosity since I had just finished the book, and that was where my dislike began. Where the writers and director changed the story, which they did very frugally. With that aside, I will concentrate on the movie and how it was made.

The actors of any movie are a good place to start, so that is what I will do. Lukas Haas was cast as the lead, Kino, who is described in the book as a large and strong man who has physically worked for everything in his life; I would be surprised if Lukas Haas weighs more than 150 pounds. Physicality can be overcome if the actor believes in his part and is committed, however this is not the case as Lukas Haas would just stand there watching the other actors go, even though they were not even half-decent, trying desperately to remember his lines. Richard Harris, playing the villain of the movie (not of the book), was a slight saving grace, and was able to do the best with the lines he was given. Nevertheless, I still do not understand why this two-time Oscar nominee chose to do this movie.

Even without the actors help, the director can still make a movie a success. Once again, though, this was not the case. Each scene of the movie was extremely poorly crafted, and even laughable to watch. With random characters thrown in to state obvious facts, my favorite being the man with the beard proudly announcing that "they have not yet said a price" during the appraisal scene. The director also had a poor eye for detail with little mistakes throughout, such as Kino's black spandex that he was wearing underneath his loin cloth, which can be scene plainly during the diving scene. And of course the director couldn't resist throwing in a love scene that lies nowhere in the book.

The Pearl was an overall terrible movie, and I found myself laughing aloud at the poor filmmaking and acting. In my immediate memory, I cannot think of a movie which was worse than this. The Pearl has obviously received zero award success.

I give The Pearl a very worthy 2.1/10.

One of the worst movies I have ever seen.

• acting...uh what acting - plot...just plain silly. I bet the book was good but this movie puts the whole story to shame.

• i took us about 15 minutes to find out the movie took place in Mexico or some other country in central America. Bad casting: Gringo Americans trying to act like Mexicans - the guy who played Kino bombed it so badly that it wasn't funny anymore.

• why oh why did Richard Harris take part in this movie. Doesn't he have better things to do like take care of his garden and visit grandchildren and so on.

+ the DVD's box made me pick up this crap so i guess it's worth mentioning