★ 7 / 10
Interesting story of how Christianity came to the
John B
Interesting story of how Christianity came to the Hawaiian islands and great to see the beauty of the islands, but story was a little slow going.
Interesting story of how Christianity came to the Hawaiian islands and great to see the beauty of the islands, but story was a little slow going.
★ 10 / 10
Very moving picture. Incredible true story, dramatic backdrop
R T
Very moving picture. Incredible true story, dramatic backdrop of The Islands and great lead in the role of the Hawaiian queen makes for a movie worth watching…
Very moving picture. Incredible true story, dramatic backdrop of The Islands and great lead in the role of the Hawaiian queen makes for a movie worth watching again.
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★ 1 / 10
We decided to watch this film because we
R T
We decided to watch this film because we love Hawaii and the beautiful landscape it offers, having recently travelled across several of the islands. We put it…
We decided to watch this film because we love Hawaii and the beautiful landscape it offers, having recently travelled across several of the islands. We put it on and couldn't stop staring as we were so stunned at how ridiculously average the movie was. We have nothing against the subject matter, but we truly believe that the story they were trying to tell deserved better treatment, and respect for production values so as not to embarrass the religion, the people, the place and the industry. We've seen student films with better acting and production standards compared to this movie. It seems like it was full of first takes, with no real care given to the quality of the final production. There are shots where people literally fall over accidentally in the shot, and the director figured that there was no reason for another take, or to even just cut it out.
I'm sure the actors were all lovely people and had a wonderful time working on this. Unfortunately from the get-go, the dialogue is stagnant and badly delivered. It was so wooden, unbelievable and distractingly average. So much so that we couldn't stop critiquing the performances and were constantly drawn out of an already unabsorbed viewing experience. Any scenes that were meant to be emotional just weren't, as it was hard to become engaged in any way with anything happening in this film. We were almost surprised that Oscar winning across Mira Sorvino was in this, but honestly, if someone offered either of us a paid trip to Hawaii, regardless of what the project was, we'd likely be up for it with no questions asked.
The best potential of this movie would have been to see the beautiful scenery. But the cinematographer seems to struggle with using that in his favour and showing it off. Beautiful cinematic wide shots were rare. When they were shown via drone, the drone operator struggled to keep a nice steady shot, giving us some sharp movement which reminded us that the director didn't care if the shots were crap or not and was happy to keep the first and only shot in the final print regardless of quality.
The cinematographer really loved his locked-off tripod shots with awkward cropping. I can't remember the last time I saw someone crop actor's heads off in a wide shot without being artistic about it. Why are you dissecting actors faces like that? The camera was also often angled downwards, so rather than any beautiful landscape in the shot we had a great view of the grass and the ground. Why not shoot this in a studio if you aren't going to utilise your surroundings?
And the colour grading and changing lighting conditions between each shot made them disjointed as if they were shot on completely different days. Some of the shots were clearly overexposed and attempted to be graded down. Why leave these in the final movie? Or why not just hire someone who knows how to correctly expose a shot for film production?
The soundtrack sounds like the same song played on an organ was on loop throughout the entire movie. And what's with the lack of location sound and foley? Again, what's the point of filming on location if you're just making it sound like it was shot in a studio? Give us some location sound and better sound design to at least do something to help immerse us in some resemblance of a viewing experience.
This is meant to be a period piece. Are we surprised that the arts and costume department dropped the ball? The sailors in white costumes looked like they were about to bust out in a musical until they opened their mouth and we discovered how horrible their acting voices were. And the tribal tattoos look obviously painted on, as they kept bleeding and smearing in the rain. The tattoos that were genuine on some of the actors again reflected the lack of care put into this production, as they showcased modern designs and not that of which would have been present during the 1800s.
The VFX were actually okay and somewhat convincing. It may have been where too much of the budget went, rather than spent on improving the rest of the production.
We can't recommend more for people to avoid this film like the Corona Virus.
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59%
AUDIENCE
5.6/10
1.7K
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can't believe Mira Sorvino acted in this crappy movie!