2010: Moby Dick

This is one of the worst movies I have ever seen. I am so shocked half-way through it- that I had to stop- and go back and look over reviews- to make sure- super sure- that maybe what I am seeing is a comedy. No- it's just that bad. The cgi is so tragically bad- that in one scene- you see a closeup of a whale's eye and see the wiremesh show up because of low polycount. Wow.

I think this is a treasure of a movie for film students- It must be mindblowing to them how it is possible that these fools got funded to make this crap- and then it actually got distributed- amazing. If I had made this movie- I would not have distributed it- out of sheer shame. I think the actors probably looked at this movie afterwards in its entirety and walked out before it ended.

At this point in time, Asylum movies are among the worst in all of creation. You don't get to be this bad without effort.

Anyone watching this movie in the hopes that it will be anything more than a cheap sucker-punch at the classic novel Moby Dick will be disappointed in the worst way. If you were expecting a remotely plausible story with reasonably capable actors and even some worthwhile special effects, then you should have never watched a movie made by Asylum. You are very behind on the times if you don't know that Asylum doesn't do that sort of thing.

It is soul-crushingly bad. It's like watching despair. So much so that I'm beginning to suspect that they are doing it on purpose. Nothing else could possibly explain how they can relentlessly churn out terrible movie after terrible movie, with absolutely no shame. I'm truly starting to believe that Asylum is in fact dedicated to the less-than-noble cause of making their mark as the worst movie making company in history. All of the things that a good movie needs will never be found in an Asylum motion picture. They need a trophy for epic failure in movie making.

But it's not all bad. Asylum is definitely good at one thing: Making movies so bad that they mysteriously 180-themselves into something good. This movie didn't really succeed at that, but it did have some very entertaining moments. The "special effects" are notably radical; certain scenes with the whale literally caused me to slip out of my chair laughing, and the look on the doctor's face nearly caused me to have a stroke (watch it and you'll see what I mean). For that reason alone I'm giving the movie a 2 instead of a 1.

This take on the classic literary masterpiece Moby-Dick does not deserve to be even mentioned in the same sentence. Herman Melville is turning in his grave right now. Just about the only thing that's related to the book are the names of the characters. The story is set in a present day submarine, features some of the worst acting imaginable, grade school quality production, and just about the worst script.

And the worst part about it is that it takes itself seriously. I am sure it will quickly make it's way to IMDb's bottom 100. I am just happy I didn't waste any money on this pile of crap.

When I first heard people criticizing this movie, I wrote them off as the typical whiners that accompany the release of any outrageously far-fetched monster movie. Of course whales can't grow to the size 2 football stadiums, and of course they can't snatch helicopters out of the air--that's why it's fiction! It's precisely this outrageous scale and the novelty of seeing the impossible that makes these films so entertaining and thrilling. However, this time the criticism proved to be 100% deserved.

Sci-fi B movies have their place in my heart. And I actually quite enjoyed Peter Benchley's "The Beast" and its epic portrayal of a giant man-eating squid. That was a made-for-TV movie from 1996; fourteen years later, we have "2010: Moby Dick". But although CGI has made huge leaps in the intervening years and no doubt costs far less these days, Moby Dick's special effects are still laughably bad in comparison. They simply come off as cheap and very rushed.

To be fair, the whale itself, although a bit too shark-like IMO (as seen in the movie poster), isn't all that bad. It's not the best CG ever, but it's respectable for a low-budget movie. However, much of the supporting special effects used throughout the movie is very poorly done, with no attention to detail.

For example, we've all seen underwater explosions on TV and in movies. When something blows up under water, the explosion has a very distinct look: there's cavitation, a bright flash, and lots of gas bubbles. Not in Moby Dick though... In Moby Dick, the underwater explosions are simply dry explosions taken from stock footage sloppily overlaid on top of a poorly rendered underwater scene. The result is an entirely unrealistic effect that precludes audience engagement in the story. I mean, there are Xbox games that have more convincing underwater action sequences.

Another example of the sloppy effects in this movie involves a scene in which a dead "school of squid" are supposedly being shown floating to the ocean surface--that's what is described in the dialog at least. But instead we're shown a shot of the ocean overlaid with blurry blown-up photos of 2 enormous-sized squids. And not only are the squids very poorly pasted into the scene (imagine a really bad Photoshop job), but as the camera pans (being shot from a moving helicopter), the squid cut- outs move completely out of sync with the background (the ocean surface). No attempt is made to synchronize the squid overlays with the camera movements or the corresponding perspective changes. And it's scenes like these that make the film look so amateurish and cheesy. You might expect this from a local cable access program or a Conan O'Brien skit, but not a feature film.

Sadly, as the movie intensifies and the stunts get ever more outrageous, the effort made by the filmmakers and special effects team seem to decrease. By the end of the movie, when the audience ought to be sitting on the edge of their seats, gripped by the explosive action as they approach the big finale, they're instead completely detached from the on-screen action, the sloppiness of the film having worn away any suspension of disbelief they had. So when the big finale does come, they're no longer emotionally invested in the characters or plot enough to care.

Although Barry Bostwick delivers an impassioned performance as Captain Ahab, Renee O'Connor (Gabrielle from TV's Xena), the female lead, is unconvincing in her role as a marine biologist. And for good measure, a few peripheral military characters also deliver some spectacularly bad acting during their few seconds on screen.

This is just a really shoddily made movie. There's no other way to put it. It would have been better had they cast Jack Black as Ahab and turned it into an intentionally cheesy comedy/spoof. However, this movie tries to take itself seriously and aims to be a big action monster movie, but the production team clearly weren't willing to make the effort for it to work.

I don't believe in such a thing as being untalented, just laziness and sloppiness. And that's what killed this movie. The sad part is, most of the problems don't seem to be budget related, and the individuals involved are clearly capable of producing quality work if they simply paid more attention to detail and set higher standards.

I am just glad that Herman Melville is not alive to see what they have done to his immortal tale of Ahab and his White Whale. I thought the film went over the top when they were using names like Ahab and Moby Dick, but when they added the character names of Starbuck, Queg Qheg, what really got me was the name of the submarine, U.S. S. Pequod, now that is just a little much. I am just glad that Herman Melville has been dead for over 100 years or he may come back from the grave and let us know what he thinks. At least they didn't have a character named Ishmael.

Still, as bad as that is, I find the film compelling, maybe that's because I have such a craving for a stupid horror film. It's worth a watch if you don't expect too much from the film.