It's turkey time!

Rating: Null/10 (25 July 2011)

I watched this on DVD this evening. I am not one to stop watching a movie once I start but this one I stopped halfway through, watched something else for awhile to wake myself up, then, for reasons only that I don't like to leave any movie partially watched, inflicted the rest of it on myself.
Critics have said it was beautifully filmed. Which part? We seemed to have interminable shots of grasslands with frolicking actors and treetop shots going around in circles. For a beautifully shot film try Kubricks masterpiece, Barry Lyndon.
While on the subject of Kubrick another critic mentioned the 'savages' reaction to the ships first arrival being compared to '2001, A Space Odyssey'. Those scenes were quite good but what happened as the movie progressed? The 'savages' reactions became duller and duller until they became almost non existent. (Duh, actor dressed as savage stands watching actor dressed as colonist, no reaction no nothing. dull dull dull) So much footage of actors doing nothing, staring at each other while we poor audience had to mind read (actually to help us out various thoughts were muttered during the movie. These were mostly gobbledygook anyway).
The director needs to learn how to use facial expressions to express emotion if he wants his actors to be silent. He should take some lessons on this from Sergio Leone (See the first 30 minutes of Once Upon a Time in the West).
The actors were so deadpan, particularly Pocahontas, that I thought they must have been subjected to an overdose of Botox.
I was mildly entertained by the inept fight scenes between the colonists and the savages. It looked like a bunch of clumsy extras trying to stage a fight scene. The result, a slapstick farce.
I should have watched this on network TV, the advertising would have broken up the tedium.
This was one of those movies that I won't remember much of by tomorrow.
A complete dead loss.