USA Network's Moby Dick Airing as a 2-part Mini-series March 15 and 16 at 8PM Eastern
Review by Aaron Sherman
Up-Front
Patrick Stewart does the best he can in a poorly cast
role. Direction is spotty, but the adaptation is well done,
and the special effects are beautiful when they aren't trying
to render a whale.
Details
As billed: "AT&T presents Patrick Stewart in Moby Dick"
Stars : Patrick Stewart, Henry Thomas, Ted Levine and Gregory Peck Director : Franc Roddam Exec. Producers : Robert Halmi, Sr., Francis Ford Coppola, Fred Fuchs
The Review
Herman Melville writes the kind of books that high school students love to hate. So, how do you turn Moby Dick into a family movie? USA certainly tackled that one with style. The screen adaptation is well crafted (I'm tempted to go watch the Gregory Peck or John Barrymore versions to see how the scripts compare). So why, given a great script and a purported 18 million dollar budget, do you make so many mistakes?
First mistake: Patrick Stewart. I love Patrick Stewart. Even after Babylon 5 ruined me on TV SF, I would still go back and watch re-runs of Star Trek: The Next Generation for his outstanding performances. But, now we see him in the one roll he is least suited to: the insane captain of the Pequod. This is strange because he does a fantastic job playing someone that he cannot possibly convince me he is. He delivers the big lines with force, and the movie is worth seeing for any Stewart fan, just for those scenes. But, overall, Stewart just is not Ahab.
Second mistake: The director. I have deliberately not looked up what Franc Roddam's other credits are. I don't think I want to know. He falls flat here, and I put almost all of the blame at his feet. There is a sequence at the end of the film where I had to laugh (if you've read the book, you should know that laughing at the end of the movie is just plain out of context). Maintaining continuity is not something that Roddam does. Nor is maintaining atmosphere. The scenes in the very beginning all felt like a set (though part of this may be my prejudice, having grown up in New Bedford).
Third Mistake: Historical detail. Mr Melville took great pains to put as much detail about whaling as he could in his book. Let us simply say that USA did not go to the lengths that Melville did. The harpoons are wrong (if I recall correctly, the harpoons that they use did exist, and were used to cut up the whale, after catching it). The clothes are mostly all wrong (you can tell that it's an Ausie production given all of the mountain coats, or leather dusters as we call them).
Fourth Mistake: Rendering. Ok, so you want to make a movie about a whale. Clearly computer rendering technology has gotten to the point that it makes sense to try creating the whale on a computer. Fine. So you get to the point where you can see that the finished product just doesn't look that great and what do you do? Well, if you're Franc Roddam you show way too much of it so your audience has a chance to see all of the problems. Sigh. However, there are a lot of computer-aided effects in this film, and most of them are very good (in that I almost did not detect them, and I *do* look). At the end, there's some smoke that is a little cheesy, but I happen to know how hard smoke is, and I was impressed.
Given all of this, can such a movie be worth seeing? If you have never read or seen Moby Dick, the answer is yes. Remember that we're talking about *the* whaling story here. No other author came close to describing what it feels like to be on a big ship, and what it means to hunt whales. This story is not to be missed, for it is part of our history. On the other hand, if you are a fan of the original book, or one of the other adaptations, I warn you away. You will be disappointed.
-AJS
-- Aaron Sherman Safety Net Solutions ajs@ajs.com Senior Perl Snob (and bottle-washer) www.ajs.com/~ajs finger ajskey@lorien.ajs.com
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