Review of The Perfect Storm (2000) by Spielberg00 — 29 Sep 2011

The thing that really irks me about THE PERFECT STORM is that I had read that it was a disaster film (and it's made pretty much clear in the title), but the actual disaster didn't get started for a whole forty minutes, which almost brought me to the point of thinking that "Perfect Storm" was some kind of metaphor.

The basic layout is as follows: 1-30 minutes - characters are introduced with enough relationship statuses, innuendos, overly charismatic drama to create an entire soap opera; 31-40 minutes - the characters leave their spouses/fiancées, board the ship, but continue with the non sequiturs and double entendres that make you groan, "Enough already!"; 41-120 minutes - over an hour of TITANIC-esque intensity and dazzling (but terrifying, considering this is based on a true story) disaster scenes--which is exciting, but it makes you think, "We go from soap opera.

..to disaster?", because the beginning does NOT make sense to the rest of the film; 121-128 minutes - the film is coming to an end, with slightly less intensity, but thankfully no "return of the soap opera"; 129 minutes - the film's over, folks, you can go home now.

That's the gist of this mediocre movie. It's just what you expect of a shipwreck film.