Welcome, ladies and gentlemen to an all new Reaction & Review. Tonight, guys, I'm gonna be covering a science fiction film from 1973. That movie is "The Day of the Dolphin".
Now, I learned about this movie thanks to me watching one of Emer Prevost's old game livestreams called "Fibbage", which came from one of the Jackbox Party Pack games. Now the premise of "Fibbage" was that you had to come up with a lie for an answer to a question, and if any of the other players picked your lie answer, you would get the most points for that question. Now if you really want to know more about "Fibbage", I would suggest you look up any playthrough of the game on YouTube.
But getting on back topic, as I said a moment ago, I learned about this movie from watching one of Emer's streams of this particular game. And one of the questions that they showed was about this movie. Specifically, it had to do with the film's tagline. The tagline of the film is "He unwittingly trained a dolphin to kill the President of the United States". And that got me curious on finding out more about this movie. So when it finally came to me finding a copy of this movie at one of my local video stores, I bought it and now I can finally cover it for this series.
Now aside from the tagline, the only other thing I know about this movie is that it stars George C. Scott. Which is great, because he's a great actor, and I'm hoping that he'll do something good here in this movie. In fact, I want this movie to be great, but I'm not sure if it will be or not yet. The only way I'm gonna find out is if I shut up and I push play, and I'm gonna do that right now. So, without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, it's time to kick back, relax, and check out "The Day of the Dolphin".
6 minutes later
So, guys, I just learned how dolphins give birth. Apparently, they just swim around in the water until their baby just hatches out of their body. It actually is rather interesting to know that. I would've never have guessed.
12 minutes later
Well, guys, I am willing to say that, while the film is a little slow moving right now, the music here is really good. You guys can't hear this for obvious reasons, but I really like the score for this movie so far. It sounds very relaxed and soothing. Which is something that I don't say very often about scores in movies, but this one, so far, is definitely on that scale.
10 minutes later
You know, guys, as cool as it is that the dolphin can actually count to the number 10, his voice is also kind of annoying. Yes, I understand it's a dolphin, so it's not just gonna naturally speak our language fluently. I just wish his voice wasn't kind of irritating to listen to. Just saying.
19 minutes later
Well, guys, Alpha's not too happy right now, considering that he has been cut off from his mate from that metal door and is trying to sorta slam into it with his tail, and has been doing this all day and night, too. I'm not totally sure why exactly Jake did that, but I'm willing to see where this is going.
2 minutes later
OK, so he did it to get Alpha to talk, which he actually did. Thus, Jake finally releases the door to let Alpha and Beta reunite together. Well, as kinda messed up as that method was, at least it actually worked. So, gotta give Jake some props there.
10 minutes later
Well, I actually didn't think those dolphins would come back in their side of the water after hearing one of the guys there saying that there's a shark in the tank. I thought they would've just swam out to sea and never be heard from again. But I guess I was wrong there.
19 minutes later
O...K...I was not expecting a dead body to appear like that in the tank. That certainly was a rather unexpected thing to see in this movie. That definitely caught me off guard a bit.
The Review
Well, guys, that was "The Day of the Dolphin" Let me go ahead and shut the movie off now...OK. So, where exactly do I begin here...? Well, I guess I can say this first. The movie was actually pretty good. Now mind you, it isn't great by any means, but I do feel like the movie has some kind of weight to it, to where I can't really say that the movie is disappointing. Yeah, the premise is goofy and sorta stupid, but I feel like the filmmakers put in a remarkable effort to make this film work in their favor.
Why don't we go ahead and start this review off proper by first discussing the writing. Now, first off, I should probably address that tagline that I mentioned at the start of this thing. "He unwittingly trained a dolphin to kill the President of the United States". First of all, that tagline, to me, is an instant grabber. How exactly do you train a dolphin to kill the President of the United States? Well, I can tell you guys this. The method of it how it's done is actually pretty simple. And without spoiling exactly how it works, I will say that it's not like if someone trained Jaws the shark to where they savagely kill the President of the U.S. by dumping him in the water and just letting the shark eat him. It's nothing like that at all. It's actually a rather unique method, and part of that has to do with our main character, Jake, training the dolphin on how to speak our language. Like I said, I won't spoil the entire method of how exactly it all works, but it actually is a really unique and simple method and it does make some level of sense.
Now with that said, I want to talk about the biggest problem with this movie's writing. And it's not the premise itself, such as George C. Scott trying to talk to dolphins, or the tagline of the movie itself. To me, those aren't really big problems. No, the biggest problem with this movie's writing is the motivation for killing the President of the U.S.. Basically, guys, the whole thing boils down to a political conspiracy that doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. And the worst thing about this is that all of it is done through exposition. You're just being told about it rather than being shown anything. Which, OK, for a movie about dolphins being trained to talk our language, probably would be something that would come out of left field anyways, but I still think they could've done something better with it. Instead, the whole motivation just felt like it was tacked on just so we can have our tagline exist in the first place. And also, I don't even remember the President of the U.S. being mentioned about this whole political conspiracy. Now I could be wrong on that. Maybe if I end up watching this movie a second time, they might mention him in the conversation. But still, whether the President was mentioned or not still doesn't really make very much sense in that conversation.
One other problem that this movie kinda suffers from is it's runtime. This movie clocks in at about 104 minutes long. And you can tell that this movie feels a bit too long, especially when you exclusively focus on the dolphins for a few scenes. Those scenes, in particular, felt like padding. Perhaps if this movie trimmed down on those scenes a little bit, the film could've probably flowed better. And somehow, I just felt like a made by pun there with the word 'flowing', and I'm kinda sorry for making that just now. Oh well.
Anyway, those two issues aside, the writing here is actually really decent. Even for a goofy premise like this, it still has quite a bit of heart to it. Our characters here are likable and fleshed out. The latter going to Jake, because he has quite a bit of character depth in this movie. And the relationship he has with Alpha, the dolphin, is really good. And you do care about both of them as the movie goes on. Now I suppose that if you find this concept of Jake training his dolphin to talk in the human language is too ridiculous to your liking, then there's a good chance that you'll end up hating this movie. And I can't really say that it's not possible. Because in my experience in watching movies that have really odd or creative premises doesn't always make for a good movie. And for some people, they'll probably think that way about this movie, too. But like I said, despite all that, I really think the premise did end up working to a degree. The only thing that doesn't exactly work is the motivation for killing the President of the United States. Again, I felt like that was just tacked on just so we can have this premise to begin with.
So anyway, writing here is still pretty good, as long as you're able to tolerate this odd concept. For me, I was interested in it long ago and now that I finally got to see in it's whole context, it actually did kinda work. Speaking of which, the acting here is also really good. The best actor, by far, would have to go to George C. Scott. He easily makes this movie work and is the biggest standout of the whole film. Now admittedly, he does have a tendency to ham up his lines a couple of times when he has to raise his voice, but still, he did an amazing job here for what he had to work with. Same goes to everyone else here. Everybody pulled in their weight in this movie and they did a really good job here. So, kudos to the entire cast here. You guys did a fantastic job in this movie.
Camerawork here is really good. The lighting here is great. Although considering most of, if not the entirety of this movie, was shot outdoors, it was probably to be expected for the lighting to be really good. And it would've been some sort of crime if the lighting was shit. Sound-mixing here is really good. The music here is great. Like I said earlier, the score here sounds very relaxing and smooth. And after looking up the person behind the music, I can tell you guys that the film's score was done by a man named Georges Delerue, who had a shit ton of music for a bunch of movies and TV shows for nearly 50 decades. Which is outstandingly bonkers! Now admittedly, it's for stuff that I had never heard of. But still, with how much he had done over the years, it's pretty cool to hear something from him for the first time coming from me, and I can say that I'm very impressed with it. So yeah, the music here is really good.
Overall, guys, when all is said and done, can I recommend "The Day of the Dolphin"? Well, like I said earlier, if you're able to tolerate this rather goofy premise of George C. Scott training a dolphin to talk our language or even the tagline of what the premise eventually leads to, then you might actually end up enjoying this movie. However, if you're not able to do that, then that's totally fine. Because I know some people care for something that's, well, safe and standard, I guess. And I don't mind that myself every now and then, but I do like it when movies like this try to go for something that's kinda out there. And they did manage to make it work for the most part. Again, the motivation for the plot is tacked on, but just about everything else works pretty well. So for the most part, I can recommend this movie to you guys, as long as you're able to, you know, tolerate the concept of this movie well enough. And for me, I was able to tolerate it enough to hold onto for my DVD collection. I'm curious to see how well this movie holds up on repeat viewings for me. But until then, I'm gonna go watch something else. And considering that this movie had a rather goofy premise, I'm gonna go and watch "Chopping Mall", because that's one other ridiculous premise for a movie that I really do like. So, I'm gonna go do that next as soon as I get done with this review.
And with that, guys, we come to the close of another Reaction & Review. Until next time, ladies and gentlemen, take care, and I will see you all later. Peace.
No comments:
Post a Comment