2010: Moby Dick

MOVIE DETAILS

Rating: 2.4 out of 10
Director: Trey Stokes
Writer: Paul Bales, Herman Melville
Star Cast: Barry Bostwick, Renée O’Connor, Matt Lagan
Genres: Action/Adventure/Thriller
Release Date: November 23, 2010 (United States)

2010: Moby Dick

However, I enjoy reviewing the movies from this production company The Asylum. All those silly mistakes by novice filmmakers, all those ridiculous baked in phrases, dozens of unrealistic moving parts in the story, broken logic and belief, cheap special effects, outrageous characters; it has no end.

Usually, it is quite amusing to laugh with the Asylum or at least be grateful that one does not have to suffer the indignity of being one of their invested fans. Imagine these people getting together to fathom some of these classic awful but entertaining movies and having lots of fun in the making while even chuckling at the prospect of people like me watching it. In most cases, I can quite comfortably appreciate the humorous tone of the majority of the movies produced in this industry. It is apparent that such a film has been done purposefully, in order to give clean fun and comical entertainment to an audience that is probably going to be drunk when watching it. Unfortunately, Moby Dick possesses none of these charms or qualities…

It’s safe to say that this is director Trey Stokes’s first full length feature film and it certainly will be his last, considering this. For starters, the most noticeable weakness with Moby Dick has to be the presentation, more particularly for what is meant to be an opressive creature feature, this is played straight, even with the twist that the viewer sees that the filmmakers simply can’t laugh at how bad it is. This film is mindblowing to say the least in how serious it is played, with so many thrilling scenes wanting to be engaging and killing moments.

As if to look more ridiculous, the actors are simply paying customers thinking they are participating in some Oscar worthy performance, furthermore we rarely get to witness the standards insults such as this film. To make things worse, all these useless people booked are not able to articulate a single proper sentence, let alone perform a convincing portrayal. To add to the confusion, some of the more annoying sound tracks in movies for a very long time, some of the worst designed special effects, and the general sense of lethargy that no one cared at all, and we have a complete disinterest of both yours and my time!

Captain Ahab Bostwick’ s (the giant white whale here becomes grey and approximately 400 feet long) narrative is very loosely built around the central character and plot. I’m specifying loosely because that is the only extent of the connection you get and that translation is quite the stretch. Ahab’s lust for vengeance sees him on a submarine accompanied by a troop of “sailors” in combat fatigues.

Marine Biologist Michelle Herman (O’Connor) is pulled into the action when the characters of the sub emerge just next to her little research boat and the whale which has been harmful to innocents once again is the target. With the most zealous passion, Ahab tries every means to locate the whale. It is even a helicopter sent by the army to prevent him, and to the viewers of the film this is more of a joke how will a helicopter assist to stop a nuclear sub! He will even go in to bomb the depths far deeper than what is likely possible for a sub to destroy ‘wear the whale out’. The plot is so ridiculously absurd and nonsensical it is even difficult to sit back and giggle at the idiocy in it. Then there is the extreme gratuitous use of special effects that are uncalled for and, to be fair, are not that terrible.

Whales are magnificent beings and interesting to swim which most people having a deeper resemblance to a shark’s body shape, but with the characteristics of a sperm whale. But what I find quite annoying is the lazy approach used in the lethal whale in which it hunts its prey in less than ten feet areas or buries itself so deep. And when an officer of the coast is standing, the whale is below him which looks complete foolishness. Even the dumb beast scooches onto the shores and onto the rocks and leaps into the air to smack the tiny crew. It is ridiculous, and it is supposed to be entertaining, yet it is not. I did try to bear the stupidity, at least hope to find some rationality in it, but when the submarine comes shooting through the water at a hundred and hits the surface like a great white shark, I knew I was defeated.

In case you manage to last up till the conclusion, perhaps you are in a better position to justify the idea that a whale of 400 feet, being enclosed in SHALLOW water of an island can swim up full speed from the bottom of the ocean towards the water’s surface in order to leap out! Ridiculous, completely idiotic; for all its faults, the movie could have, should have and has every right to be marked down for a lot of Asylum movies but for some reason, they tried to be serious, quite a big blunder!

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