Review of Grand Canyon Adventure: River at Risk (2008) by Daniel K — 02 Apr 2009

This looks great on Blu-Ray. It's not as spectacular as something like Planet Earth, but it's pretty beautiful. It is fun to be able to point out places one has slept on High-Def as well. The Grand Canyon is amazing and yet terribly flawed.

I love drinking in the cool fresh-seeming water straight out of the river, which of course is entirely due to the horrific Glen Canyon dam. I've spent many an hour hitchhiking from within the frame from this landmark of human overreaching.

The only people that wanted to give me a ride back to my vehicle were Utah locals of course. The Canyon looks wonderful throughout. The story/narrative is decent. Redford's voice is indelible, but it seems to be used sparingly after the introduction.

The structure of the film is perhaps a bit lacking as the first act regarding water is not ultimately tied directly to the focus of the picture too well. This might just be me analyzing the picture from a perhaps too scientific perspective (I did write a 20 page paper on the alien invader Tamarisk, twice).

I've also spent many an hour fighting my way through many a tamarisk thicket from mid-Utah to northern-Arizona. It is a mighty invasive species. I wish the picture were much better, but it has set enough time aside for both scientific argument and scientific wonderment to be worthwhile to all but the most ridiculous individuals.