Moby Dick (1998)

Fresh and Exciting

Don't Believe the Hype

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

Stiff acting!! CGI whale looks more fake than the puppet model in the Huston version. Starbuck had a modern California accent, and he came across like he was bored and couldn't wait to say his lines, and get out of there. Richard Baseheart was a far far far better actor then that baby faced kid playing "Ishmael" Patrick Stewart did NOT play a convincing role as Ahab...it was just Stewart playing Stewart. Gregory Peck actually was Ahab in the earlier version. Even little Pip was better portrayed i the Huston version then this bomb. In fact the entire cast seemed to be bored and just wanted to get it over with. Many of the others did also.

The film is a masterpiece of literature, and while this film is inferior to the book, which is of no surprise really, for a TV film it wasn't that bad at all. I have to admit and this is probably blasphemy to some people here I am not a fan of the 1956 film, though I am a fan of the director John Huston, but I found it too slow for my liking and Gregory Peck I found dull as Captain Ahab. This TV version is no masterpiece in any shape or form, but it is a worthy re-make. It does start off slow, but picks up at the end, and while I found Moby Dick adequately menacing in the 1956 film this whale I didn't care for as much. Flaws aside, it is competently made, yes with some uneven effects on occasions, but the scenery, cinematography and ship are impressively rendered, while the score and script are good. And I was surprised at how faithful in general the film was in terms of story to the book. Along the way there are some improvements too, Patrick Stewart is wonderful in the title role, actually capturing the demonic presence of Captain Ahab much better than Gregory Peck, who gives a confident performance as Father Mapple in a role that suits him better I feel. Overall, a worthy re-make if inferior to the brilliant book. 7/10 Bethany Cox

For some strange reason Texas-born Henry Thomas affects an Irish brogue in his portrayal of Ishmael, the narrator in Melville's towering novel written in the second person. It is this young schoolmaster's first experience with the sea but former child actor Thomas takes the wide-eyed innocent thing too far. But this time at least the part went to an actor of appropriate age.Patrick Stewart is best known to American audiences as Capt. Luc Picard in the syndicated TV series "Star Trek--The Next Generation". As Captain Ahab, speaking in accents midway between British and American, he really does seem like a Nantucket man out of the 1840's. He is diabolic, obsessed, yet sea-wise and with considerable personal magnetism. As first mate Starbuck, husky, stolid Ted Levine gives the performance of his career. He plays the part in an understated fashion, does not try for any period accent, yet there is real conviction in his portrayal of a man of conscience who knows he is serving a captain who will lead the ship and crew to destruction yet is bound by his oath of fealty.A genuine South Pacific Islander, Piripi a New Zealender of Maori descent, plays the harpooner Quequeg in this production. He has a fine speaking voice and turns in a creditable performance despite some occasional over the top routines.The scene where the two, Quequeg and Ishmael, go aboard the **Pequod** at its berth in Nantucket harbor and are questioned by the owners is particularly well acted. It is evident that these are sharp businessmen for all their Quaker dress and speech.As this was a made-for-television production, the special effects are less spectacular than even the Hollywood filming forty years earlier.

I must reiterate the remarks made by Mr. Vaugh Birbeck. This made-for-TV version of Moby Dick misses the mark by a mile and then some. All of Birbeck's points are valid, but I'll add a few of my own.Moby Dick is about a lot of things – obsession, revenge, objective evil, the nature of existence – the novel is so pregnant with meaning both within and below the text that it has become a byword for significant literature. It is the perennial head-scratcher which has introduced generations of students to the richness of the English language as an artist's palette of tones and colors. Captain Ahab is Socrates run amok. He has seen beneath the façade of mere things to glimpse a sublime Truth, which isn't simply a benevolent deity, but a horror show of forces vast, inscrutable and infinitely hostile.But Moby Dick is also about whaling. On top of everything else it's a story of mariners and ships and the trade of whaling as it was experienced by Melville himself. Director Franc Roddam doesn't seem to realize this. Evidently he has so little regard for the source that he doesn't feel the need to make the Pequod a real ship from a real place on a real whaling voyage with real whalers aboard. Instead we get a rather unconvincing studio prop for a ship, miscast actors with slipshod direction for a crew, and the classically trained Patrick Stewart struggling with a wretched screenplay that preserves little of Melville's language. Watch the 1956 John Ford production with Gregory Peck in the role of Ahab instead. Even though it is only 116 minutes long Ford's direction of a masterful screenplay by the brilliant Ray Bradbury really gets under the skin of the novel.