The New World
You know this movie did appeared on several Best Of 2005 lists.
I have to say I was looking forward to this one, but it really went wrong. Wasn’t this movie supposed to be about Jamestown, John Smith and Pocahontas. It was all Pocahontas.
John Smith disappears half way through the film and we never really explore Jamestown at all. This is completely Pocahontas’ movie and her relationships with John Smith and John Rolfe. So we have a bad ad campaign and a story that can’t seem to find a direction. Not good when your trying to snag an audience.
And be warned, this is a heavily narrated movie. The lack of dialogue and all of the narration makes it feel more like a documentary than a feature film. But I can handle narration, if we are narrating a good story.
I do have to say that one thing has kept me from writing this review for a few days and that is the rumor that there is a longer, R-rated version of this movie yet to be released. If it ever will be I don’t know, and it shouldn’t really change the review because this is the product they gave us, but I would like to see it and see why they put this out instead.
With what they had to do the actors were fine. I enjoy Christopher Plummer, but I have to say he was barely in the movie. Q’Orianka Kilcher plays Colin Farrell’s underage love interest. This is just creepy at best. It makes it very difficult to critique a romance in a film when you know the girl is only 14 and the guy is 29/30.
I will say that she portrayed a simple beauty in the way she looked and acted that worked well in the film and made her stand out among her tribe, calling more than just John Smith to notice her and treat her different.
Colin Farrell and Christian Bale were both fine in their rather muted roles.
All in all the movie was mediocre to poor, not at all what it should have or could have been.
