Noah

I guess I should preface this review by revealing I am not a very religious person. I’m not actually sure if that works for, or against, being a viewer of the latest Darren Aronofksy movie Noah, but I think it’s worth mentioning. Possibly if I had studied the Bible more I would have been aware of some amazing facts of the times!

1. The humans of old had amazing metallurgy skills being able to make metal piping, seemingly windmill type devices and all sorts! And possibly long before Noah there were metal based cities or villages or something, with pipes n stuff.
2. There were walking, talking huge rock people. Yep.
3. Some of the rocks could ignite into all sorts of fires just by hitting them with the right motion. Oh, and they glowed and fizzed.
4. There were some amazing dried herbs that magically put animals to sleep without them needing to eat or pooh or anything. But it didn’t affect humans, only animals.
5. How the fuck did all those animals know at what time to come together, where the ark was, how to move together, which two of the many were the special two, etc, etc, etc?
6. Plants and indeed, entire forests, can grow in approximately 10 seconds flat.
7. I could go on, but I think you get the idea.

This movie makes no sense. It is truly unbelievable and truly impossible to grasp or believe in any part of it. There is a large amount of repetitive imagery showing ... something ... I’m not too sure what, but it seems to mean different things at different times. Some of the imagery was truly profound such as a bit showing silhouettes of different generations fighting each other, but most of it was embellished meaningless crap.

The story was terrible. It tried to make something huge and emotional and grand and epic, but at the end of the day it failed miserably. It became too engrossed in trying to be worthwhile that it lost its way. It’s also truly dark and depressing. By the end when I think I’m supposed to feel elated that humans are still around and thank Russell for being a good drunkard, or father or something, I actually felt even more depressed that humans are still around than I did before I watched the frickin thing.

The one saving grace was the acting. Russell Crowe was excellent, Emma Watson was as good as even, Jennifer Connelly was great, the three brothers were all surprisingly great too in light of who they were acting with. Ray Winstone was very miscast in my opinion, and is in fact not a very good actor at all if you ask me. He was far too comically evil for this movie and really fell flat the whole time. Even being seemingly written out for a good 20mins before popping up at the end as the bad guy you thought was gone. And, Anthony Hopkins was good but .. I don’t know what he was in the film for to be honest.

The special effects went from astoundingly good to astoundingly bad. I’m not sure if this was a budget, time or intentional effort as it was glaringly obvious but it helped me realise that this film was just all over the shop the whole time. Some of it was really quite beautiful and profound but mostly it’s a bumbling boring mess of a film. I really can’t recommend anyone go and see this film unfortunately. Definitely stick to Aronofsky's other flicks they are well and above this film in every conceivable way.

SCORE: 4/10 (4 points for the acting and batshit crazy idea of even trying to make this movie)

IMDB Info for Noah