Product: The Odyssey [VHS] (1997)
Rating: 5.0
Spectacularly amazing
Casey DuVall, 8th grade, B3,D2 Okay, you are standing in a movie rental store, and you have narrowed down your choices to two movies and you can only get one. In one hand you have The Odyssey, one of the two epics written by Greek poet Homer retold in a TV movie, and in the other hand Jackie Chan's newest action-adventure. Part of you want to see Jackie lay the smack down on some international terrorists and the other half knows that The Odyssey will help you academically. You decide that your parents and teachers would be proud if you rented The Odyssey, so you decide that that is the movie you will rent. But, don't you think that you are in store for one major snore fest, The Odyssey is a wild movie with off-the-hook special effects that will keep you on the edge of your seat from beginning to end. We start off in Ithaca, where the main character, Odysseus, has decided to head out with his Greek allies to fight in the Trojan War. Odysseus must leave to fight on the day of his son's birth, and tells his wife Penelope that if he does not return by the time his son is a man, to remarry. On the way to Troy we meet all kinds of characters! We meet all of Odysseus' men, Achilles, and Hector. Achilles is a warrior that can only be harmed in his ankle tendon, and Hector is Troy's general. The war wages on for 10 years, when finally, Odysseus comes up with a plan that will defeat Troy's armies for sure. He plans to build a giant, hollow horse that the Trojan's will wheel inside their gigantic walls, and after the party all night, Odysseus and his men will take over the city and win the war. The plan was going according to plan but a lone prophet believed that the Greeks were up to something, so Poseidon sent a sea serpent to dispose of the troublesome prophet. After the Greeks win the war, Odysseus states that he defeated the Trojan's without anyone help. Poseidon grows very angry at Odysseus and says that he will never go home. After Odysseus and his men set out, Poseidon sends them to an island whose only inhabitant is the giant-one eyed Cyclops! Just wait until you see how they escape, it is very exciting. Odysseus then goes to another island and meets Aesol, God of the wind and Poseidon's cousin, who bottles up all the bad wind into a giant sack. He said that the good wind will carry them home in 9 days, but that would be to easy! Ithaca is finally in sight when one of his men opens the sack and sends them across the globe to Circe, a mean witch who's honey potion changes men into animals. She changes all his men into animals. The trick would have worked on Odysseus, but Hermes had given him a special, poisonous weed that protected him from her potion. He stays there and gets a royal treatment from Circe and her maids, but instead of staying there for 5 days, she stays there for 5 years! Circe tells him he must go to the Underworld and ask the blind prophet Tiresias to find the way home. After he sacrifices a ram he also finds out that he will meet two monsters, the Scylla and Charybdis. After their encounter with the two beasts, Odysseus had lost all his men, and was staying afloat by a single piece of wood from his ship. He floats along the sea, desperately trying to swim towards land, and he does. There he meets Calypso, a goddess with witch like powers, and all her maids. She plans to marry him, but Hermes brings news to her that if she does not release him, Zeus will send her island to the bottom of the sea because it is not his fate to die on her island. He builds a make-shift raft and sets out in search of Ithaca. Poseidon then unleaches monstourus waves upon Odysseus that destroyed his boat. He tells Odysseus that men are nothing without gods, and until he understands that, he will never return to Ithaca. Meanwhile in Ithaca, many suitors from around the world came in search of Penelope's hand in marriage. They tormented her servants, pilfered his food and drink, and demeaned Penelope herself. But, back to Odysseus, who after his fight with Poseidon, was washed on the shore of Phoenician. After they found out who the stranger was, they sent him to Ithaca, and while on the way, finally understand what Poseidon had said. At Ithaca, instead of making his precencs known instantly, he was transformed into an old beggar to discover who his friends were after all these years. When Penelope stated the challenge, the suitors thought that it was easy. They had to string Odysseus' bow and shoot it through 12 axe handles. After everyone tried, and failed, the old man completed the task and transformed into his old self. Then Odysseus and his son, Telemachus, killed all his wife's suitors in a gory battle. Then they all lived happily ever after.