Moby Dick

Moby Dick is one of my favorite novels & the 1950's film adaptation is one of my favorite films. There is something about the novel that I can read it again & again & never tire of it, always finding something new. The 1950's film is like that too--I must have seen it a dozen times at least & I could watch it again right now. So when I heard that a new version of Moby Dick would be on cable with Patrick Stewart, an honest-to-goodness decent actor, playing Ahab & Gregory Peck appearing as Father Mapple, I was delighted. TV-movies have a justified reputation for being of poor quality but on the cable networks, you are often able to find a gem mixed in with the mud & this sounded like it could be just such a gem.

Unfortunately, this Moby-Dick is a hideous disappointment. The film goes wrong right from the beginning with a buffoonish, incompetent performance by the guy playing Queequeeg & a sad performance by Gregory Peck. Peck looks nothing like the great actor who could dominate films of all different types from Moby Dick to Pork Chop Hill, to westerns, etc. Instead, he looks like an elderly man reading lines. And the guy playing Queequeeg, despite his pre-release hype, is a poor actor, incapable of the intelligent, dignified performance of Frederick Ledebur in the older film.

There is very little good I can say about this movie. It is quite likely even worse than the old John Barrymore version in which Barrymore, as Ahab, goes out in the Pequod, kills Moby Dick, & returns to New Bedford to get the girl. At least that film had the benefit of a sort of nostalgic old-time Hollywood humor. This film has...well...a shot of Queequeeg's naked buttocks for any who might enjoy it. And not much else.

A vulgar atrocity that is best forgotten.