55 of 64 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Lord of the What-the-heck-was-the-director-thinking?, December 6, 2000
One cannot criticize the cinematography of this move. It is, at times, lush, humid and tropically, oppressively beautiful. All of which are good things...
...but that's all I can say good about the film.
Golding originally conceived "Lord of the Flies" as an xploration of Human nature, and how people are inheirently evil. To drive this point home, he took English school boys (some of whom were members of a church choir) crash landed them on an island during a wartime evacuation and said, "Have at it!" (metaphorically speaking). The book and indeed the 1963 movie version asks how if even children can become cruel and violent and evil with very little prompting, are humans as advanced as we like to think? Are we really all that different from animals? Readers/viewers are shocked to see how far such a small child can fall.
Weeeeeeeeellllllll...
This, the 1990 version of Lord of the Flies, puts American military students on an island during a conflict of some sort, so when the first blow is struck it's not all that surprising. This removes the impact of Golding's ideas, and this becomes another adventure story (of sorts. Like "The Hun Family Robinson"). Further, the "updated" material doesn't really work: the glo-sticks, kids talking about watching "ALF" on TV (which seriously dates this movie. I guess the screenwrighter thought ALF would be around forever. Another example of the narrowness of this version. It is already obsolete, while the book perseveres.), Simon having a vision of a stealth bomber, etc.. It's all a bit too uneven, too naive almost, but totally lacking in charm (if such a word can be used here). In essence, this is a visceral film that lacks guts.
Nothing upsets me more than movies that violate the basic premise of a book ("The Handmaid's Tale" also comes screaming to mind), and this movie goes out of its way to be "different" but identifibe by its title. Really, this should have been called something else for as much as the story is like the book; perhaps "Ishtar" would be more appropriate.
One weird editing glitch I noticed was an image of a sunrise - the viewer sees it from a cliff with a tree interveing the space. Well, that night at sunset we see the same tree, the same cliff, but reversed!! Like the sun rose and set in the same place in the sky and the tree had turned to meet it. It's very disconcerting.
So, unless you're taking a class in comparative cinema, don't bother with this one. An, whatever happened to Balthazar Getty? I thought his name guaranteed his career longevity. Weird...
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Relax, it's a good movie!, January 25, 2006
So many of these reviews have really piled on the sludge. Relax, this is a good movie! All right, so it's a rather loose cinematic interpretation of Golding's novel. That's what the film medium allows for. The cinematography is sumptuous, the pace of the movie quick, the story absorbing, the message of malicious cruelty's natural advantage easy to read. The young actors give very fine performances--the villain Jack is superb--and they should all get extra credit for having to do so much of this movie in their underwear. As their uniforms and their old sense of selves deteriorate, the boy-cadets are reduced to their jockeys: and then in turn their jockeys are reduced to filthy scraps of cloth once they run off to join Jack's camp in the wild. With their painted faces and matted hair this virtual nakedness makes the transformation to the savage state disturbingly complete. If you like movies with a strong story-line and good cinematography, I recommend this (with reservations for children under 12).
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18 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
What does this movie have to do with the book?, April 1, 2002
This movie has basically almost nothing to do with the book. Half of the script seems to be completely made up. Acting is also nothing to howl about. The only good acting was from a kid who played "Piggy".
You should stay away from movie as far possible. Read the book, or watch 1963 version of the movie - it's alot better.
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