Review of Alpha (2018) by Olga G — 15 Sep 2018
The Revenant meets The Good Dinosaur meets National Geographic. My 10 year old son absolutely loved it. Me - I tried. I really tried. To stifle my cynicism. To shush the nitpicky voice in my head going, "That time of year in a place like that the lake water would be way too cold for a leisurely swim.
And he wouldn't be wearing a loincloth with no one but a wolf around." (There are plenty more, but I don't want to spoil things.) Maybe there really were female shamans and it's not just a MeToo era casting.
Maybe people 20,000 years ago did wear fitting clothes and had relationships exactly like ours. Maybe I would have succeeded if the entire film didn't feel like a reenactment amidst gorgeous landscapes.
The characters, except for the main boy, are flat, two dimensional. They just didn't feel real. Cody Smit-McPhee plays the lead with enough conviction to make me care for the boy. And it doesn't hurt that he so easy on the eyes.
But that wasn't enough to make the film work for me.
This review of Alpha (2018) was written by Olga G on 15 Sep 2018.
Alpha has generally received positive reviews.
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