I'll tell you why so serious

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

I cannot recommend this film highly enough. A true cult film, with a powerful eerie soundtrack. Filled with mystery, and it keeps you guessing from start to finish. Thought provoking, and complex, but well worth a look. I watched it knowing nothing about the film beforehand, and it makes viewing all the more rewarding.

The film stars Richard Chamberlin as a corporate attorney who has mysteriously taken on a case defending Aborigines in the city of Australia. A few remaining members of a tribe are accused of killing a man wanting to join their tribe.The film has an intoxicating, mesmerizing feel to it with the long, lingering shots, the slower pace, the scenes of rain and water flowing, the dreamy and unusual soundtrack. It is interesting to watch and the film does draw you in. However, something is missing here. The film needed narration, which makes me sound very American, or explanation that is a bit more clear. The attorney has dreams and learns that his dreams come true so does that mean his vision of water and death are prophetic? It seems so but then the film ends and it's a bit anti-climactic, a bit of a letdown.I think it would have worked better for me had the script been a bit less esoteric.

In 1977, I doubt if audiences were as open to a film like this as they might be today. Assaulted in the 1970s with such fare as "Rosemary's Baby" it would have been natural to reject this without giving it a chance.Thankfully, DVDs are forever.Weir creates a film of foreign concepts, foreign to us but at home to an Aboringine still in touch with tribal ways.Hail stones the size of bricks arrive out of a clear blue sky. Muddy rain falls on Sydney. The sky is filled with rainbows and strange southern lights in the middle of the day.If you surrender yourself to the Aborigine concept of dream time, it makes perfect sense. What is surprising is to find that an Australian (Richard Chamberlain) has been forecast as part of this end of cycle.Weir used real tribal people and gave them a kind of supervisory approval for the script to be as authentic as possible.If you let your mind absorb the film without defense systems, it packs a worthwhile punch.

THE LAST WAVE is never going to win over the mainstream audience. It is a slow-moving but fascinating film for those who are willing to go along with it. An Australian properties lawyer is asked to take on the case of five aborigines accused in the murder of one of their own. All sorts of portents and omens soon pop up, as the man's death involves a tribal issue that was not meant for white man's court, and pretty soon the lawyer is having trouble distinguishing reality from fantasy. It looks like the end of the world may be at hand, and he and the aborigines may know this but no one else does. Richard Chamberlain as the lawyer is at his peak here. David Guptil, a familiar face from several other Australian flicks and a decent actor, is one of the five aborigines on trial. THE LAST WAVE is simply not for everyone, anymore than is MAGNOLIA (both happen to have strange things falling from the sky). Check it out on a slow Saturday night.