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Oceans (1/10)

by Tony Medley

Run Time 87 minutes.

Only for children.

This plays like Disney had lots of stock footage in its vault and wanted to get rid of it, even though they didn’t know what it was about.

It’s hard to believe that the banal, uninformative script was actually written by seven, count them, seven people! But that’s what they claim, and they should all get credit for one of the most unenlightening scripts ever written for a documentary. So here are their names; Christophe Cheysson (who directed), Jacques Cluzad (who also directed), Laurent Debas, Stéphane Durand, Laurent Gaudé, Jacques Perrin, and François Sarano.

I sat through this film and didn’t learn a damn thing. My showing was at a normal theater and half of the audience was comprised of children under the age of 9. That’s the level of intellect that this script targets. But the children were running up and down the aisles paying little attention to what was on the screen, so it didn’t capture their fancy, either.

Just to show how uninterested the filmmakers were in educating people, they show several pictures taken from space of rivers spilling into the ocean spewing filth. But they never once identify any of the rivers or the location of the photographs! Gee, thanks, guys.

They fill the film with ocean creatures, but rarely identify what the creatures are that they are showing us. They don’t identify what’s going on on the screen. There is shot after shot after shot of unidentified creatures swimming. Some are swimming to the left and some are swimming to the right. They are all, apparently, in the ocean, which is why they made the final cut.

The filmmakers apparently have a political message and show some of the creatures helplessly trapped in huge nets. But they never once mention the word “Japanese” when the Japanese are the main culprits in the despicable endeavor of destroying the great whales. Can anyone spell “cowards” (and I’m not talking about the Japanese)?

Pierce Brosnan was assigned the task of reading this horrible script, but every time he utters something it sounds as if someone had to awaken him out of a sound sleep to read the lines. Could it have been more soporifically read by someone else? I don't think so.

Actually, some of the photography, while not award quality, is interesting, just to think of how they got the shots. But it is certainly not enough to justify spending good money to sit through this thing, especially since there is so little actual information imparted. There are some good shots of stormy seas.

Don’t you think that one of the seven people who wrote the script, or someone at Disney, might have said, “Why don’t we identify more of these creatures? Why don’t we give our audience some facts? Why don’t we try to educate them about the ocean?” Apparently not.