Review of The New World




Originally Reviewed May 20, 2006

This was basically about the "true story" of Pocahontas and John Smith. Not your Disney version. Although, I think this is one time I would have preferred the Disney version to whatever sort of artsy drama we would call this. John Smth and Pocahontas meet, they fall in love under bad circumstances, John has to leave, Pochahontas becomes Europeanized and marry's another guy. (They never said this other guy's name OR Pocahontas' name ONCE throughout the whole movie I don't think) Eventually the married couple moves to England where Pocahontas is treated like royalty. John comes to visit her, and they realize that they can never be together. She stays with her husband and son, but soon dies. The End. This whole movie was very predictable I think, and SO VERY SLOW! There were only about 3 lines of actual dialogue the rest of the movie was either in this vague sort of symbolic voice over or just represented visually like in the way she looked or he looked in their eyes. Even though Pocahontas knew English perfectly by the end of the movie you wouldn't have known it, because there was so little speaking. I was really waiting for them to start singing "Paint with all the colors of the wind". But it never happened. It certainly would have brought the beat up a little. This movie had absolutely zero happy/exciting/slightly upbeat parts. In order to feel the lows one must feel the joy, but this movie really did not allow us to do that. I think this movie really had the potential to tell a really awesome story, but it let me down. The movie was beautiful cinematically, the scenery was really great (I don't know how they found some of those beautiful landscapes in today's world) and the camera angels were usually pretty interesting (I had to think of something nice to say) but, I don't know anything more about Pocahontas or John Smith now than I did before. Don't rent it. It will bore you to tears. Unless you are doing a project on the subject for school it is totally not worth it.

Overall Rating:

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