Review of Noah (2014) by Mzup77 — 18 Aug 2014

I'm going to step away from all religious interpretations and regard this simply on its merits as a film, not as a traditional biblical story. The problem is, it doesn't really have many merits. This film was simply two hours and fifteen minutes of tedium.

The special effects are barely worthy of a SyFy Channel original film. The acting is overly hammy and in some cases mind-numbingly wooden, part of which I feel is the part of the script, which eschews actually writing good dialogue for what seems to be just spewing out statements at random.

The editing ranges in style from choppy to lingering overly long on mundane, uninteresting scenes. Everything is just...off. As bad as everything else felt, the score was possibly worse. I've never had issue with the work of Clint Mansell before, but for Noah he's opted for a blaring two note score that just keeps screaming the same two flipping horn blasts in your face over and over again.

This is also the first time I would ever describe Aronofsky's directing as "ham-fisted". Everything feels overdone, self-indulgent and overproduced. I usually walk out of a Darren Aronofsky film contemplating the themes and mulling it over in my head to uncover deeper meanings.

This one only stayed with me as a bad memory.