Morning Light

What happens if you put fifteen young, good looking adults in the same place, and make them compete to join a team that will participate in one of the most elite races in sailing? As it turns out, nothing but sailing in the documentary Morning Light.

Roy Disney wanted to get young sailors in the TransPac race so he bought the Morning Light, and set off to get the best to man it. Fifteen mostly obscenely rich, mostly white, all good looking, young sailors, Chris Branning, Grahm Brant-Zawadzki, Chris Clark, Charlie Enright, Jesse Fielding, Robbie Kane, Steve Manson Chris Schubert, Kate Theisen, Mark Towill, Genny Tulloch, Pieter van Os, Chris Welsh, Kit Will and Jeremy Wilmont are chosen to vie for eleven spots on the Morning Light. They go sailing, talk about sailing and look at sail boats.

A reasonable person would venture a guess that a bunch of young virile men in a competitive situation trapped in a small space with a couple of women might bring some sexual tension. It would be expected that directly competing to participate in one of the most elite races in sailing, the TransPac, would cause outbursts or the occasional jockeying for attention or recognition. The powerful part of competitive reality TV…er movies… is the strong emotional connection between the people on the screen.

Watching Morning Light is like trying to swim on a slip and slide. While it is wet and you can move across it swiftly on your stomach, you can't drown in the story because the water is only there to lube you up. Nothing that would make the audience submerge into the depths of the people or circumstances even grace the screen.

Morning Light has the emotional depth of a sociopath. We might as well be watching, "How to sail: A Step by Step Guide for the Rich and Moronic," because it offers equal levels of emotional expressiveness. They did not make me wonder or care about who would be selected to make the team, if they won the race or how they got along. Instead of asking myself questions of wonder during the movie, I often asked myself, "Who cares?" On the plus side, I do know far more about sailing than I ever did before, maybe enough to encourage me to buy a sail boat – if I could afford one. Until then, I hope Disney leaves Morning Light out at sea.

This movie is not for everybody, clearly, as judging from the previous comment! Let's start out by first mentioning that this movie is a sailing movie first and fore most, and it is a documentary. Those of you looking for Real Worldesque drama look elsewhere. Those of you looking for a well made documentary that captures the essence of a sport, look no further than Morning Light.

The movie tells the tale of a contest set up by the late Roy Disney. Disney is a life long sailor, and having devoted his life to the sport of sailing, as well as bringing sailing to the youth, he came up with a way to bring a rich mans sport to the future of the sport, young college sailors. Roy Disney's ambitious goal is played out beautifully throughout the movie, and with the Walt Disney $$$ backing it, they have successfully made one of the best looking documentary's ever. Really the camera work was fairly remarkable. Non-sailors will not be able to understand the total lack of space aboard a Transpac vessel, and the shots that those camera workers got were remarkable.

The greatest testimony I can give for this movie was when we showed it at the Yacht Club that I work at. We had a rainy day and were running out of ideas to keep the children at bay, but had this movie unopened in the office. The kids were really taken by it, and they learned that all the skills they were honing on the water in smaller boats can be translated directly to the larger ocean vessels. While sailing has for the most part been left to the "rich white men" (as the previous commenter put it) the sport has understood that and has made an elaborate effort to bring sailing to everyone. As the director at the largest sailing school in the midwest, I must say that movies like this are exactly what the sport needs. With gas prices at record highs and only going up, why wouldn't sailing be a popular sport in the future? Hopefully documentary's like Morning Light will continue to be made even after Roy Disney's passing. Rest in Peace sir!

Since 1906, boaters from all corners of the globe have gathered to compete in the Transpacific Yacht Race, a two-week-long sailing competition that extends across more than 2,000 miles of open ocean, starting in Los Angeles and ending in Honolulu. In 2007, Roy Disney and a team of expert trainers sponsored a hand-picked crew of young sailors - ages 18 to 23 - to compete in the event (indeed, it was the youngest team in the history of the race). Named after the 52-foot boat on which they sailed, "Morning Light" is a documentary account of both the preparation for that race and the race itself.

The movie spends much of the first half focusing on the grueling training the youngsters underwent as part of the process of whittling down the group of 15 hopefuls to a final crew of just 11.

Directed by Mark Monroe, "Morning Light" is a wholesome, upbeat, fast-paced documentary with razor-sharp editing (by Monroe and Paul Crowder) that really gets the adrenaline pumping, and cinematography (by Josef Nalevansky) that truly makes you feel like you're a part of the action. Through interviews, we get to know a little about the youngsters themselves, what motivates them, what excites them about sailing, and what it means to them personally to make - and, indeed in some cases, to not make - the final cut.

With its inspirational, shoot-for-the-stars pop-rock soundtrack, MTV-style editing techniques and "Real World" communal setup (albeit a squeaky-clean one), the movie is clearly aimed at a younger audience. And there are times when the film does feel a little too "Disneyfied" for its own good (did none of these young adults ever once swear?). But folks of any age will be able to thrill to this film, provided they have a spirit of adventure - armchair variety or not.

I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. It is a documentary movie about a group of young sailors who are brought together by a most benevolent and charitable Roy Disney, his beautiful and creative wife and their crack squad of sailing coaches. Ultimately, thirty elite sailors have to be pared down to the fourteen who will race the boat "Morning Light" in the difficult Transpac Ocean Race. The photography is gorgeous. The reasons the coaches give for choosing the lucky sailors who eventually take part in this challenging endeavour are as interesting as the hurdles which befell the young sailors along their journey such as safety, night sailing, mechanical repair and sheer endurance. This movie is a delight and is real life as opposed to a hokey drama. Well done!

Haven't seen this movie in years but remember watching it on rainy days in sailing camp so it must have been good. 10/10.