Overdramatized Music

Rating: 5/10 (5 May 2013)

(Spoilers)After a gripping and technically well-done 1st 30 min or so of "The Impossible" and it's showcased tsunami, director Juan Antonio Bayona has a bit of a problem on his hands. He's pulled his best visual punches with still 2/3rds of the runtime left. This might be solvable for other directors, but Bayona is unfortunately lured or becomes reliant on substituting dramatic music into way too many scenes to try to instill emotion. What ends up happening is a complete over-saturation of the music, and in effect a cheapening of the event. Family-members are re-united with triumphant strings and grand score over and over and over. It starts to seem phony and tedious. To top it off, Bayona likewise relies much too heavily on focusing on the gore of the injuries. Too much dripping blood, cuts, or lacerations do we need to witness through close-ups. While I can't call the effort a miss, the movie seems like it could've been handled much better. Mixed review as the movie succeeded with it's recreation of the tsunami but got snared into some lesser problems..