I almost went home. I had been at the film festival all day long and frankly I was worn out. I seriously thought of skipping the 11PM showing of this movie. But no, I had heard any number of good things about it. Some people made it sound like one of those great movies that you just have to see in your lifetime. But then they always say you should go with your first instinct.
I know it was late and I was tired but in the past I've always managed to find energy for a good movie. I've sat up half the night watching movies because I got sucked in right before I was heading to bed more times than I can count. This was not such a movie. This was a thinly veiled environmental message.
Don't get me wrong, I don't really have a problem with the message. I really hate being preached to though and that's exactly what this movie does. The message is crystal clear. Nature good. Humans bad.
I'm not going to totally hammer this movie. There were some things to like. The story follows a young man searching for the spirit of the forest to cure him of his infection. He gets this infection battling a demon. This demon is pretty damn unusual looking and the battle is well paced and exciting. I really liked the creative designs for the demon. But things would head rapidly downhill for some time after.
He begins a long quest that really doesn't seem to go anywhere for awhile. There is an extensive dead spot where our hero wanders aimlessy and meets people. Or something like that. I don't know, it was pretty damn boring. Right about then I had to give Ultra Magnus, seated next to me, a swift kick to stop his snoring. I didn't care that he was missing the movie but his snoring was keeping me awake.
Eventually we meet a girl raised by a wolf god and she is busy waging a war on Irontown. This town is busy strip mining the land for ore, driving the wolves, gorillas and boars from the forest in the process. All of this involves giant animals and tree spirits that resemble demented bowling balls crossed with maracas. The audience just loved those spirits, lapsing into hysterics at the mere sight of them. And don't even get me started on the spirit of the forest itself. Do you remember that alien at the end of Mission to Mars? It looked like that thing on valium mixed with a mutated deer on acid.
There are moments of quiet beauty in the film but the wait to get to them is just too damn long. The characters were simply not engaging enough to carry the story. That makes the movie's environmental message all too obvious. I felt like the makers of this movie felt I should have been on the floor in the fetal position with guilt by the end. Luckily I have a pretty good resistance to guilt and managed to maintain my composure. Or maybe I was just snoozing and slept through my guilt trip.
To make a long story short (I know, too late) the movie is pretty but uninvolving. To give you an idea of what I mean, following the movie I couldn't remember a single character's name. That doesn't exactly indicate I was deeply involved with any of them. If you are particularly tuned in to environmental issues you will probably click with it but other wise just skip it. Unless of course you really get into demented maraca bowling balls.
- John Shea
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