In the Heart of the Sea
Proud, sturdy men head off to sea, promising their women they will return, only to be humbled by nature as they fight for their lives.
It wasn’t such well-worn territory in 1851, when Herman Melville kept readers rapt with the tale of Moby Dick. In the Heart of the Sea gives us the actual ordeal behind Melville’s inspiration, but can never muster anything more worthwhile than some randomly impressive 3D visuals.
Director Ron Howard does himself no favors by setting his film as a storytelling flashback. A young Melville (Ben Whishaw) has ambitions of writing a book on the whale ship Essex and its legendary encounter with a massive white whale, but fears that, “If I write it, it will not be as good.”
He seeks out the ship’s last living survivor, and after much cajoling and a wad of cash, Tom Nickerson (Brendan Gleason) begins his tale, and we climb aboard the Essex with him as a young boy excited to join a whaling crew for the first time.
His captain (Benjamin Walker) and first mate (Chris Hemsworth) are at odds with each other from the beginning, almost as much as they are with that tricky Boston accent, making lines such as “sailing to the edge of sanity” sound even more awkward.
Howard and screenwriter Charles Leavitt adapt the best-selling book by shifting intermittently between Nickerson describing the events, and flashbacks bearing them out, giving neither approach the chance to build sufficient dramatic heft.
Howard is more successful at delivering smaller details about both the ship above and the whales below, as well as a few sequences worthy of an IMAX 3D spectacle. The search for an emotional anchor to this legendary story, though, remains fruitless, and Melville’s early fears finally come to fruition.
Grade: C-
Don Verdean
A self-proclaimed biblical archeologist somehow finds holy artifacts that have eluded the scientific and theological community for centuries – millennia, even – and brings them home to the US of A to help one Utah pastor reinvigorate his flock.
A ripe premise, that. The fact that the archeologist is played by Sam Rockwell, and the pastor by Danny McBride, only heightens the possibilities. On top of that, Don Verdean was directed by Jared Hess, co-written with his wife Jerusha, the team responsible for Napoleon Dynamite.
This should definitely work better than it does.
On paper, Don Verdean is a hoot. The pieces are there, but the execution is way off. Hess’s film is too sweetly, compassionately cynical for its own good. What humor the film offers is frustratingly laid back, and far too often a tart comedic set up suffers from weak follow through.
That’s unfortunate, because they may have really had something if they’d known what to do with it.
Grade: C-
Also opening this week in Columbus:
- ALL THINGS MUST PASS (NR)
- CHRISTMAS, AGAIN (NR)
- CHRISTMAS EVE (PG)
- DEMENTIA (NR)
- FALL IN LOVE LIKE A STAR (NR)
- HEART OF A DOG (NR)
- THE IRON GIANT: SPECIAL EDITION (PG)
- MACBETH (R)
- MEDITERRANEA (NR)
- PEGGY GUGGENHEIM: ART ADDICT (NR)
- THEEB (NR)
Reviews with help from George Wolf.
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