Cheesy `White Squall' disappoints
A white squall is a sudden violent sea storm that can easily sink a medium-sized sea vessel. I really wish I had known that before I saw this movie.
Based on a 1961 true story, White Squall is about a group of teenage boys in their last year of high school who forego the traditional senior year to sail around the world. The skipper of the boat and his wife have run this school on water for many years to teach young men self-reliance and teamwork.
One boy's journal provides the narration for the story, although it's hard to imagine any 17-year-old writing the soap opera-ish dialogue we are subjected to.
The boys meet their skipper, played by Jeff Bridges, whom the boys label "strong, tough, and won't take no for an answer, but he makes you want to please him," of course.
They meet their English teacher, who goes around spewing Shake-speare as if he lost the audition for Dead Poets Society.
The boys all have their demons. One is torn between obeying and rebelling against his controlling parents, another can't read, a third has recently lost his brother. In true coming-of-age fashion, most overcome these obstacles during the trip.
They have a night on the town with a troupe of eager Dutch girls, they sign an autograph book preserved for a hundred years in a box on a mountain top, they ride the wake on the backs of dolphins.
I began to think, what a nice, meaningful experience for these boys, what a bore for me.
This lasted until the last half hour of the movie, when finally the real plot emerges.
A terrible white squall hits the boat, and although, as the trailer insightfully points out, "the strongest will in nature is the will to survive," not everyone does.
At last the movie has some significance, though it too cannot be saved.
Following the accident, the men unite in the face of hardship because, as the ship's bell incessantly reminds the crew, "Where we go one, we go all." (But even this, not to be morbid, is not the case.)
I can't recall a movie that has as many cheesy, wannabe-philosophical lines as this one: "I can see a small piece of myself in each of them." "Singing shows unity that all thoughts are one." I could go on.
The scenes are contrived, the acting is mediocre. This film wants to be so much more than it is, reminiscent of better movies such as S tand By Me.
Instead, we get lines such as "The Albatross [the name of the ship] was something that we made, something inside of us." I wish they'd kept it inside and spared us.
This item appeared in the Arts & Entertainment section of the February 2, 1996 issue.
Copyright © 1996 The Rice Thresher. All Rights
Reserved.
This document may be distributed
electronically, provided that it is distributed in its entirety
and includes this notice. However, it cannot be reprinted
without the express written permission of:
The Rice
Thresher, Rice University, 6100 Main, Houston, TX, 77005, USA.
The Thresher Online Project -- ethresh@rice.edu