People keep making excuses for this film and how it doesn't have the budget or flash of a James Cameron movie. Actually, what it lacks is a script editor or writer who has any idea what it is like to watch a movie.
The first thirty minutes demonstrate utterly nothing happening. The crew recycle old jokes, complain, and chatter on all without establishing any real personality to the characters. You could cut this down to a five minute montage of one-liners and lose nothing. Then, there's lots of stumbling around while trying to figure out what is happening. Are we supposed to believe the Navy entrusted this crew of people with a $600 toilet lid, much less a submarine? Once the movie gets going, it improves marginally, but not really. Characters cannot identify a reason for any action they take. Instead, they just flail about and burn screen time doing stuff that tells us nothing about the characters, doesn't contribute to the plot, and builds an "atmosphere"...of tedium. It is excruciating to watch the filmmakers stumble again and again without making a point or providing any kind of actual tension. Instead, it's like watching a second-rate imitation of Seinfeld that got filmed underwater by accident.
As others have noted, the short synopsis of this is: incompetents undersea are trying to build a missile base, dynamite a cavern, and unleash a terrible monster. Everything else happens exactly as you would expect past that point. Then at some point, anticlimax happens when the monster turns out to be not as exciting as you might hope, and implausible as the terror of the deep that keeps these people in "suspense." What makes all of this interesting is that aspects of this movie are well done. The sets are beautiful, the cinematography is great, and the soundtrack is well-above average. But it feels like a sitcom, has cardboard characters, and never gets any depth (har-har) to the motivations of anyone in the film, so it ends up being like "Moby-Dick" retold by the town drunk. I got a lot of laughs out of this film mocking it MST3K style but definitely do not recommend it.
There are films with $30,000 budgets that beat this one palms down simply by having edited their scripts for what an audience might find interesting. Did anyone read this script? When they typed it, maybe, or when they started filming, or when they xeroxed it for crew members? It's as if no one could look at this and think, "You know, that's going to be a COLOSSALLY BORING MOVIE, let's drop the shtick and go for the action... or add some personality to these stick figures." But nope. Zero out of four billion stars.
The first thirty minutes demonstrate utterly nothing happening. The crew recycle old jokes, complain, and chatter on all without establishing any real personality to the characters. You could cut this down to a five minute montage of one-liners and lose nothing. Then, there's lots of stumbling around while trying to figure out what is happening. Are we supposed to believe the Navy entrusted this crew of people with a $600 toilet lid, much less a submarine? Once the movie gets going, it improves marginally, but not really. Characters cannot identify a reason for any action they take. Instead, they just flail about and burn screen time doing stuff that tells us nothing about the characters, doesn't contribute to the plot, and builds an "atmosphere"...of tedium. It is excruciating to watch the filmmakers stumble again and again without making a point or providing any kind of actual tension. Instead, it's like watching a second-rate imitation of Seinfeld that got filmed underwater by accident.
As others have noted, the short synopsis of this is: incompetents undersea are trying to build a missile base, dynamite a cavern, and unleash a terrible monster. Everything else happens exactly as you would expect past that point. Then at some point, anticlimax happens when the monster turns out to be not as exciting as you might hope, and implausible as the terror of the deep that keeps these people in "suspense." What makes all of this interesting is that aspects of this movie are well done. The sets are beautiful, the cinematography is great, and the soundtrack is well-above average. But it feels like a sitcom, has cardboard characters, and never gets any depth (har-har) to the motivations of anyone in the film, so it ends up being like "Moby-Dick" retold by the town drunk. I got a lot of laughs out of this film mocking it MST3K style but definitely do not recommend it.
There are films with $30,000 budgets that beat this one palms down simply by having edited their scripts for what an audience might find interesting. Did anyone read this script? When they typed it, maybe, or when they started filming, or when they xeroxed it for crew members? It's as if no one could look at this and think, "You know, that's going to be a COLOSSALLY BORING MOVIE, let's drop the shtick and go for the action... or add some personality to these stick figures." But nope. Zero out of four billion stars.