Going in, I was afraid that the best thing in
"The Perfect Storm" would be the poster. Just look at
that small, sorry fishing boat, riding almost vertical up this
monster wave. Take image home, add imagination and simmer... (Man,
those guys are screwed!!) I was less than impressed by the dialogue
in the trailers, but I like George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg,
and the splashy scenes looked like they might be fun.
They were... and then some! The film did a great job of pacing and foreshadowing, giving us an impressive taste of routine rough weather, than backing off to calm seas and sunny skies, then gradually building up to the worst weather event in recorded history. Eventually, the enormous ocean swells were like mountains and canyons rolling all over the place... and there were real people trying to swim towards each other in it! (Up 50 feet one second, down 50 feet, the next). This is one of those rare occasions where the special effects actually succeed at creating an environment that's really spectacular, yet so convincing, you don't question it. No fooling. This film is here to tell you that hurricanes at sea are no longer off limits to movie makers.
This pic makes "Titanic" look like a cocktail sausage party, and my own real-life white water mishap look like a slip in an inflatable kiddie pool.
How very ironic that on this great technical milestone, the script sucks. Good writing is a technology that has existed forever, but is sadly absent from this project.
Which is not to say that they didn't try. The first hour of the movie is devoted exclusively towards creating so many characters we're supposed to believe in and care about. The cast was excellent, but the goofy lines they had to read robbed their characters of a crucial third dimension. I didn't mind it as much as some critics. ("the perfect bore"? Ouch.) I enjoyed the ambience of Gloucester, Massachusetts and I enjoyed most of the characters. I liked them; I just didn't buy them.
Given the very real nature of the subject matter, this movie could have had tremendous emotional impact, but the consensus is that it fizzled big time in that department.
Even so, I was very glad and relieved to see a relative minimum of cliches. Of course, you have your tedious, emotionally distraught girlfriend on shore scenes, but beyond that, the movie defied easy prediction, and when the hour of reckoning came about, it didn't flinch the way so many hollywood movies do.The plot didn't flinch in any of the ways I fully expected it to, and for that, I was very pleased.
Another plus is the largely authentic depiction of the fisherman's lifestyle, from the rowdiness and economic hardships onshore to the mundane chores of preparing & loading up to the hard work and very real dangers out at sea.
If you can find a way to deal with that awful wet toilet paper script, "The Perfect Storm is definitely worth seeing. It delivers all the thrills and spills promised in the title, and the light dose of real-life insight is more than most other summer blockbusters contain, combined.