Review of The Rover (2014) by Tim H — 17 Aug 2014

I loved Animal Kingdom. Regarding "The Rover": to quote the man leaving the theatre ahead of me, "excuse me, I'm French, did I misunderstand that movie, or was it actually the worst film I've ever seen?" No monsieur, non, you understood perfectly well.

I guess you didn't see the King Kong remake, but that was quite possibly the worst film you have ever seen. After 10 minutes I thought it was slow but looking interesting. I was excited about it's feel and originality.

After 20 minutes I realised that there was nothing in the movie for a human audience to identify with or sympathise with and that the writer/creator seemingly didn't understand the most basic elements of storytelling.

Long, repeated landscape shots, although beautiful, do not make a movie. Comically long, repetative images of Guy Pearce staring at people do not make up for a complete vacuum of character development or character depth.

Lots of people (again with comical repetativeness) getting emotionlessly shot does not make up for a complete lack of story development or depth. I know there are loads of terrible movies out there, but at least they tend to have something entertaining or charming: something, anything.

I have only walked out of one movie before; this was very nearly the second. I'm baffled by the reviews so far. Everyone I was with and spoke to after the film felt the same way. Who is it that's liking this?