Review of Morning Light (2008) by Peter W — 23 Jun 2009

People seem to dislike the documentary because they feel sailing is a rich man's hobby and somehow bring up the whole class-discussion into play. That's just weird and wrong.

When it comes to this documentary, I had my fears since it was from Disney who aren't exactly the hottest company in the world to make compelling documentaries.

I've sailed a few years, nothing professional, just a hobby and could understand what the documentary was about, but what I found really weird was that for a person who is not aquainted with sailing, there was 0 exposition into the sport. Nothing about how the ship functions, why the sailors are trimming sails at any given time etc.

It was like a camera was set to go alongside Morning Glory and everything left for the viewer to digest. The only tangible point for the viewer then is to concentrate on the characters. Here too, Disney falters as the 15 junior sailors (of which 11 take part in the competition) seem to be all happy happy joy joy throughout the documentary. You never get to know nothing about what makes them tic and when we get to the fabled Transpac race, it seems like 99,5% of the ships participating are captained by losers and Morning Light is competing against Samba Pa Ti only.

Documentaries don't need Reality TV factors to it, but they just need to be good documentaries that have an arc into them. This one didn't, but it's still worth a watch.