Movie Review: The New World

"Look at the savages! What beasts! Snarly, smelly, infested with fleas and lice, their skins marred by hideous markings, their visages warlike, their language a strange clottage of war whoops and gurgles.
And those are the British!

That's the initial point of view in Terrence Malick's "The New World," an attempt to rescue the founding of Jamestown and the myth of Capt. John Smith and Pocahontas in 1607 from the swamp of kitsch into which it has sunk. But at first it seems almost like something that might be named "Bambi vs. the Flying Saucers" set in a tidewater theme park called Benevolent Nature, with the forest creatures -- graceful, beautiful, magical -- contemplating the clanking, stumbling invaders who've beamed down from Olde Englande courtesy of strangely festooned motherships abob on the estuaries of the Chesapeake."
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"...strangely festooned motherships abob on the estuaries of the Chesapeake." is just so frickin cool I had to feature this review of one heckuva crapfest movie. I myself would have said abob the estuaries, but monday morning quarterbacking someone else's great line sucks.

From the Director who brought us The Thin Red Line, one of the worst war movies of the modern day, New World is touchy, feely, but hardly really. Malick operates with the premise that a director should never, ever allow reality to intrude upon a theatrical presentation, but as many bad directors before him, Stanley Kubrick all but jumps back to life shouting "me-me-me", the man is a gifted cinematographer and sometimes the pretty scenery is worth the price of admission.

Sometimes. Get through the horrid acting, the clueless directing, the screenplay that never should have seen the light of day, and you've got one decent flick here. Problem is suspending your disbelief time and again when confronted with startling declarations to the contrary.

The heroine, old Poca herself, is portrayed by 15 year old Q'orianka Kilcher so there goes my lusting over her babeness because to do so would be just wrong. And Colin Farrell. What can any man say about Colin Farrell.

Nothing.