Review of Ephraim's Rescue (2013) by Ben-Sarah W — 27 Sep 2013

My main gripe with this film is the constant narration, telling us the story rather than letting the visuals speak for themselves, really annoyed me. My guess as to why they felt the need to throw in so much exposition is due to the haphazard structuring and lack of a central focus.

The surprising lack of a central character is troubling, we're constantly bouncing back and forth between side characters until we completely forget whose story we're meant to be watching. In fact, Ephraim's probably got the least amount of screen time in his own movie.

Another problem is in finding an anchoring character, because just when you're getting involved with one set of characters, and you're acclimating to the idea of following them instead of Ephraim, they either die on the trail, or we've gone on to yet another side character.

In a lot of ways, the storytelling in this film reminded me of the kindly old grandfather who sits down and tells his kids a story of his daring exploits, and instead of telling it to you straight, his mind begins to wander and he starts going off on unrelated tangents, and he does it often enough to where you lose interest and don't care to hear any more.

The only reason to sit through the whole thing is to avoid hurting the speaker's feelings. That's the only reason I sat through the entire film, because the story means a lot to the people in my family and my neighborhood and we were all watching it together in the same room.

Highly awkward situation to just up and walk away from, especially when it deals with issues of faith. You'd hate to be called a non-believer just because you didn't want to watch the rest of a meandering movie, but hey, sometimes it happens, and you just gotta let it roll off your back.