2010: Moby Dick

This take on the classic literary masterpiece Moby-Dick does not deserve to be even mentioned in the same sentence. Herman Melville is turning in his grave right now. Just about the only thing that's related to the book are the names of the characters. The story is set in a present day submarine, features some of the worst acting imaginable, grade school quality production, and just about the worst script.

And the worst part about it is that it takes itself seriously. I am sure it will quickly make it's way to IMDb's bottom 100. I am just happy I didn't waste any money on this pile of crap.

I am just glad that Herman Melville is not alive to see what they have done to his immortal tale of Ahab and his White Whale. I thought the film went over the top when they were using names like Ahab and Moby Dick, but when they added the character names of Starbuck, Queg Qheg, what really got me was the name of the submarine, U.S. S. Pequod, now that is just a little much. I am just glad that Herman Melville has been dead for over 100 years or he may come back from the grave and let us know what he thinks. At least they didn't have a character named Ishmael.

Still, as bad as that is, I find the film compelling, maybe that's because I have such a craving for a stupid horror film. It's worth a watch if you don't expect too much from the film.

Lets make make something clear, this is low budget. Whats worse is that any technical aspect that could possibly be wrong, IS wrong. A low budget is no excuse for not doing some basic research on the internet before you being production, its free after all.

We have navy officers wearing army field uniforms, we have have a one legged submarine captain and and helicopter attacking a submerged nuclear submarine with a machine gun, and doing enough damage to make the 400feet sub shake like it was being depth charged!

All the special effects and animations looks like they transfered in from the eighties and and most of the sets are awful as well. The ultramodern submarine looks like a run down Russian factory on the inside, and the instrumentation seems borrowed from a lesser Sci-Fi production.

So why did I still give it a 4? Well I managed to sit through the movie. I'll admit that I was desperately bored, but still. The acting is not as horrible as you might expect, but still far from anything memorable. And the basic story is not hopeless either, with a large studio this might have become an OK film on par with godzilla or king kong. However any similarities with the original book are nowhere to be seen, besides the big whale and the obsessed captain that is.

The 4 I gave it is being generous, but I have seen movies that are worse, and still scored higher on IMDb.

I have no idea HOW they got the cast to do this hokum. It was frakking unbelievably awful.

I have no idea how they got the cast to sign on, I have no idea. Blackmail? Threats of torture? Kidnapping? But they were just wasted. They looked like they couldn't believe they had been forced to do such awful drivel.

What killed it was the story. The original was a wonderful novel. It has been done quite well at least three times before, with Gregory Peck, Patrick Stewart or Jack Aranson as Ahab. Orson Welles made a short of it. A new version is coming out with William Hurt as Ahab, and I look forward to it. Even if the script had been decent, I think Barry Bostwick would have been out of his league playing Ahab.

The special effects aren't that bad, but it takes so little to do that these days. What was AWFUL was how they used them. The whale looks to be the size of an island, simply bigger than any animal has ever been found to be.

I could go on and on and on. The only pleasure from it was like that of watching an airplane about to crash. You know it's a disaster in progress and it will be famously horrible.

This is one of the worst movies I have ever seen. I am so shocked half-way through it- that I had to stop- and go back and look over reviews- to make sure- super sure- that maybe what I am seeing is a comedy. No- it's just that bad. The cgi is so tragically bad- that in one scene- you see a closeup of a whale's eye and see the wiremesh show up because of low polycount. Wow.

I think this is a treasure of a movie for film students- It must be mindblowing to them how it is possible that these fools got funded to make this crap- and then it actually got distributed- amazing. If I had made this movie- I would not have distributed it- out of sheer shame. I think the actors probably looked at this movie afterwards in its entirety and walked out before it ended.