j Disclaimer- anything would be sufficiently entertaining at 4 am, which is incidentally when i watched this.so. you meet Ishmael; you like Ishmael. he's wide-eyed and kinda naive (yet adorable), so you expect character development. it never comes. he seems to get more naive as time passes, somehow, and it's irritating. he also experiences two whole emotions, these being (1) vaguely apprehensive (2) mildly confused. he's cute at first; then he's just stupid. ahab is doing The Most and has a weird crush (?) on Ishmael. actually everybody has a huge crush on Ishmael, which is entirely valid but also kind of hilarious.Starbuck is actually really good (even though he's 12 times more subtle than everyone else, which kinda stands out). You feel for him. He made me cry and I'm not a crier. now im crying again.They occasionally show the very cute friendship between Ish, Queequeg, Dagoo (whom i love), and Tashtego but it's not developed much and is really only proven by a prolonged group cuddle session (which is not in itself a bad thing). speaking of, where's the We Are Married scene? just saying. pip is adorable and sweet and i love him.there is gratuitous cgi whale. meh.there are pacing issues. you're like, "okay we're on day 1 of the voyage" and then they're like No It's Been 13 Months Somehow. like, I understand that you have to skip Ishmael's whale anatomy lectures from the book but there's some ~critical~ stuff that they shouldn't have left out (like character development! and the sperm squeezing scene (squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all morning long). and the queeshmael cuddle sesh. ooh, also the whale penis coat. what a nice book).this could have worked with more than two parts and somebody on standby to tell Hurt to chill. there's a lot of plots that are started and never finished satisfactorily (ex. Mrs Ahab's storyline). But maybe i'm just a purist. idk. it was a decent reason not to sleep.

TheLittleSongbird Herman Melville's Moby Dick is a brilliant book in every way, but it has proved to be a very difficult one to adapt. As an adaptation fans of the book will find much to complain about with this version, but an adaptation stands a fairer chance at being judged on its own. In that regard this version has its moments but falls short. It is well-shot and edited, the authenticity of the costumes, scenery and the production design is to be admired, the music is rousing and haunting and there are three bright spots. Eddie Marsan is very likable and charming, Ethan Hawke brings a moving quality to a conflicted character and Raul Trujillo is a fun Queequeg. The cast is a talented one but apart from those three actors it falls flat. Gillian Anderson could have been a bright spot but she is so dour that she comes across as unusually dull while Charlie Cox has one expression only literally and that's smug but that Ishmael is very one-dimensional does him no favours. More problematic is William Hurt, who initially seemed a great choice for Ahab but tries way too hard so Ahab's vengeance and complexity is lost, he really overeggs the pudding here and shouts and strains his way through the role. How Moby Dick is rendered is one of the adaptation's major failings, the adaptation gets the colour and the way he swims exactly right but the CGI for the whale is often lousy and too over-proportioned. The script also fails, sometimes there is some of Melville's prose but a lot of it does sound too modern and it noticeably jars. The characters have very little depth, Starbuck excepted, Ahab is one of the most fascinating characters in all of literature but seems too humanised at the beginning and later becomes too much of a clown due to how Hurt portrays him. The back-stories were a good idea but don't say very much and a lot of them drag on for far too long, the first forty minutes in particular are quite pedestrian. The story is short on suspense and the first half drags quite badly and doesn't get much better, ending with a very contrived finale that is choreographed like a mix of playground antics and cheap video-game. In conclusion, has moments but lacking in a lot of areas. 4/10 Bethany Cox

Chakriya This lost me with Queequeg. Please, a Mexican with bad Maori imitation tattoos and an incomprehensible accent playing a Tongan/Fijian? About as special as Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's. And that pretty much sums up this remake.Yes, the names of the characters are the same. There are even some recognisable plot elements, like that stuff about the whale. And I don't even blame the screenwriters for omitting the 100-odd chapters of description about various forms of blubber. But please, hire a Tongan next time, I'm sure there are a few in California. Hey, get a Samoan if you are really stuck. But at least get the hemisphere right, if nothing else.

flixspix After non-stop disappointment at the movies this Summer, the latest being Cowboys & Aliens for so many reasons, this "freebie" on Encore came as a very pleasant surprise. William Hurt as Ahab was rock solid and while this may sound like heresy, was more fully rounded and interesting than Gregory Peck, whose monolithic performance embarrassed him in later years, and he didn't mind saying so in numerous interviews. (Still he had that great baritone voice) The supporting cast was fine (Ethan Hawk a bit too contemporary) and the production values commendable given the constraints of the budget. Liberties were taken from the classic novel but far from a dumbing down. And the finale, a virtual battle with the white leviathon was surprisingly effective if not all together a solid action set-piece....... far more so than anything in the aforementioned Cowboys and Aliens. I would have to say its worth checking out for most tastes and nothing too objectionable for kids over seven if they can deal with the hunting of whales.