A Family Swept Away and Apart

Rating: 6/10 (8 July 2013)

Naomi Watts, an actress who I adore, is responsible for getting my butt in the seat for this fictionalized drama about a vacationing family who get swept away by the Asian tsunami of 2004.
The real family upon which this film is based was not British, as they are in this film, but rather Spanish, Mexican or Portugese, I forget which. The movie has as a result taken on criticism for its "anglicanization" of a tragedy that affected more Asians than anyone else, but here becomes something that befalls privileged Western Europeans on holiday. No matter -- I think the filmmakers' hearts were in the right place, and that the family in the film are representative of everyone who was affected. After all, as characters, they're flat as cardboard cutouts, so it's easy for them to be stand-ins for anyone.
The film isn't nearly as grueling and gripping as I thought it would be. We don't know these people at all, and the movie takes very little time to introduce them to us, so that when bad things do happen to them, I felt the abstract sympathy I would feel for anyone in the same situation, but no real investment in their story or its outcome. The kids aren't very good actors, so it's hard to really believe the emotions they're asked to convey. Watts gives a physically brutal performance, but isn't asked to develop much of a character, and spends most of the film's running time lying prone on a hospital bed. Ewan McGregor plays the dad, and his character makes so many bone-headed decisions that only through sheer luck don't make a bad situation even worse, that I spent more time being annoyed with him than I did caring about his plight.
The visual effects are fairly impressive, and feel much more like the old school effects of yesteryear than the anonymous CGI effects of today.
Grade: B