Dir. Hans Horn, 2006, US, 95 mins
Cast: Susan May Pratt, Richard Speight Jr, Niklaus Lange, Ali Hillis, Cameron Richardson, Eric Dane
Review by Hemanth Kissoon
Sing along if you know this modern classic from Team America: World Police….
“I miss you more than Michael Bay missed the mark,
When he made Pearl Harbor.
I miss you more than that movie missed the point,
And that's an awful lot, girl.
And now, now you've gone away,
And all I'm trying to say, is: Pearl Harbor sucked and I miss you.
I need you like Ben Affleck needs acting school,
He was terrible in that film.
I need you like Cuba Gooding needed a bigger part,
He's way better than Ben Affleck.
And now, all I can think about is your smile, and that shitty movie, too!
Pearl Harbor sucked and I miss you.
Why does Michael Bay get to keep on making movies?
I guess Pearl Harbor sucked, just a little bit more than I miss you.”
That song went through my mind after watching Adrift. With a lot more skill this film could have been a great little thriller. Unfortunately, a great concept was wasted by a cringe-worthy script and an annoying cast.
Being stranded in the middle of the ocean is so far so Open Water, but Adrift’s concept is, in theory, sufficiently intriguing and different to be equally palm-sweating. Six friends are aboard a yacht for birthday celebrations, four of whom decide to go for a swim. The boat is in the middle of nowhere. Two stay behind: Amy (Pratt), who is afraid of the sea (after a childhood trauma) and needs to look after her baby, and Dan (Dane), the owner and Amy’s ex-boyfriend. Dan decides to ‘cure’ her fear rather ineptly by picking her up and jumping into the water. Amy has a panic-attack and they all want to get her back onto the yacht. However, they have forgotten to lower the ladder and the boat is too big to climb. Compounding matters further Amy’s baby is unattended in one of the cabins. They thus have to find a way back on board before they drown, but survival is so frustratingly and tantalisingly close.
Adrift is based on a real event, but ‘based on a real event/true story/etc’ usually means very little, for what percentage of the film is actually true is definitely up for debate.
What should have been a fear-filled drama is derailed by incompetent acting, poor characterisation and bad dialogue. Tension dissipates when you do not care whether the cast live or not. The speech appears to have been written to replicate how friends talk, but it just comes across as clunky and forced, especially out of the mouths of this wooden bunch. Only Pratt gives any form of credible performance.
This is compounded by cheesy flashbacks. Flashbacks are difficult to get right without looking like lazy short-hand – see The Da Vinci Code for Sophie Neveu’s childhood memories, or one of the few mis-steps in Mission: Impossible 3 with the Keri Russell training scenes. Contrast the memories and referencing in The English Patient, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Batman Begins and the intriguing narrative structures of Pulp Fiction, Citizen Kane and Guillermo Arriaga’s work – Amores Perros, 21 Grams and The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada.
The visuals on the other hand look very polished with flashes of inspiration such as our view from deep in the ocean as a man lies in silhouette on the surface with a plane soaring high above. The sporadically interesting cinematography, however, is not enough to save this film.
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