......and my wife and I each decided it wasn't worth its $7.25 admission price, even though we both only paid Senior rates for our tickets.
The Link
We went specifically to see Naomi Watts in her Best Actress nominated performance and she was very good.
But I don't think the direction and/or the screenplay gave her enough help to win the Oscar.
The action sequence showing the speed and power of a tsunami was for us the best thing in the movie.
And they actually showed most of it twice.
Spoilers ahead!!!!
However, the storyline fairly quickly revealed that all five members of Naomi's movie family were alive, although badly shaken, very scared and iniitially separated.
So the biggest drama that the actual family (on whose experience the movie was based) faced was shown to be favorably resolving on screen much, much, much faster than it did in real life.
That particular screenwriting choice, of course, greatly diminished our tension, anguish and suspense about the plight of Watts' movie husband and their three kids and, with so many other unfeatured victims missing/dead and so much damage and destruction, their individual family's plight to me seemed almost trivial in comparison.
The fates and fortunes of a few others were shown, but really only in passing.
I know the director and screenwriter were trying to emphasize and personalize one family's story and they accomplished exactly that; but, without me and other viewers knowing and feeling only what those family member were thinking at the time, it just didn't work that well cinematically IMHO.
This certainly was a great tragedy for everyone there and all their relations around the world and I fully appreciated that, but (in the manner the story was told here) the most impossible thing for me was to empathize all that much with this one protagonist family, who all made it out safe and pretty sound.
Good for those five survivors certainly and an amazing story for sure, but not really that moving a flick for at least two of us watching, when scripted and filmed as it was.
JMO.
What did you think?
The Link
We went specifically to see Naomi Watts in her Best Actress nominated performance and she was very good.
But I don't think the direction and/or the screenplay gave her enough help to win the Oscar.
The action sequence showing the speed and power of a tsunami was for us the best thing in the movie.
And they actually showed most of it twice.
Spoilers ahead!!!!
However, the storyline fairly quickly revealed that all five members of Naomi's movie family were alive, although badly shaken, very scared and iniitially separated.
So the biggest drama that the actual family (on whose experience the movie was based) faced was shown to be favorably resolving on screen much, much, much faster than it did in real life.
That particular screenwriting choice, of course, greatly diminished our tension, anguish and suspense about the plight of Watts' movie husband and their three kids and, with so many other unfeatured victims missing/dead and so much damage and destruction, their individual family's plight to me seemed almost trivial in comparison.
The fates and fortunes of a few others were shown, but really only in passing.
I know the director and screenwriter were trying to emphasize and personalize one family's story and they accomplished exactly that; but, without me and other viewers knowing and feeling only what those family member were thinking at the time, it just didn't work that well cinematically IMHO.
This certainly was a great tragedy for everyone there and all their relations around the world and I fully appreciated that, but (in the manner the story was told here) the most impossible thing for me was to empathize all that much with this one protagonist family, who all made it out safe and pretty sound.
Good for those five survivors certainly and an amazing story for sure, but not really that moving a flick for at least two of us watching, when scripted and filmed as it was.
JMO.
What did you think?
