Wow! Special Effects!

Rating: 1/10 (13 June 2010)

Anyone still impressed by CGI after we've had Star Wars and Lord of the Rings and hundreds of other fairly decent films thrown at us needs to get a life. Please stop talking about how good the special effects are. Impressive explosions or magical events on the screen do not a Jedi make, or a good movie. Any good movie or film has two key elements, story and direction. In this case, you have no story and a very convoluted plot. The story is a made up fantasy based on a video game that is only partly successful. Strike one. Secondly, let us consider director Mike Newell and his mostly television career. The small screen is one form of entertainment. When you take an image and blow it up to seventy feet across, you'd better put something interesting up there, because people will see every detail. Unlike television that shrinks a world to sameness, film is an art form that examines details. A good director can use even limited actors and make something work. But a bad director will fall back on things like special effects to sell a bad scene. This film is an example of directing at its worst. The stumbling pace, the up and down tempo, the failed execution, and the poor acting I lay at Newell's doorstep. This film is about to lose about a hundred million dollars or more for Disney at a time when their Magic Kingdoms have seen dramatic fall off in numbers, and I would not want to be in his shoes when they start adding up the loses.