The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep

I am going to review everything I watch. I am determined to not just review things I like, so I am sorry to say that my first review will be of the Water Horse: Legend of the Deep (2007).

I had the unfortunate experience of catching this film on an airplane. Most of the bad movies I have seen have been on airplanes. It is hard to say whether it is the film that is actually bad or the experience of sitting thousands of miles in the sky and turning your head in an uncomfortable position to view a tiny screen where you view a film in *shudder* full screen. I'll admit to being a widescreen snob, or more specifically in keeping the aspect ratio when viewing something. Of course, many TV shows, made for TV movies, and some films (i.e. many classics and a few recent films like Elephant (2003)) are in full screen format and should be viewed as such to keep the original composition of the shot intact.

I doubt that widescreen and a real movie theater would've saved the Water Horse. I came to the film with an open mind, due to my soft spot for all things Scottish. This is one of the most cliche movies I have seen in a long time. It is the classic boy-meets-animal, boy-befriends-animal, boy-sets-animal-free story. Set during WWII in a quaint Scottish village on the shores of Loch Ness, this film contains cheesy Scottish accents all round - the actors sound less like they're acting, and more like they're focusing on getting their just-Scottish-enough-but-still-understandable-to-Americans accent right for the sorry, faux-Scot dialogue. The boy's widowed mother (of course) falls in love with a scrappy handyman instead of the army captain - from their first rather unchemically charged interaction, a cheesy love theme pervades the air.

The film's score is an interesting pastiche of Scottish traditional and your usual film score, but often this sounds a little forced - the music has the feel of not all being from the same film, and some pieces seem generally out of place.

Most importantly, I was in no way invested in the Loch Ness monster based character that the boy befriends. The monster made off-putting noises that were akin to to the offspring of the unholy union of Jar Jar Binks and a cat. I can see how the monster is pretty cool once it gets bigger, especially for kids. It gets impressively frightening.

The bottom line:
If you have kids, they will probably have a lot of fun watching this movie - I probably would've liked it when I was a kid. If you are a twenty-something with no kids like me, you are probably not the intended audience for this film. If it catches you unawares on your plane flight, save some of your time and take a nap instead.