The Worst Film Ever

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

This is a first for me, to hate a movie so much that I sought out to slam it on a review site. I have watched bad movies, the Room was perhaps one of the worst. But at least the Room was funny, it was to me a almost perfect bad movie, one I would give a minus eight out of minus ten. This is because how I rate films is out of general quality, so one to ten, and then minus one to minus ten out of how absolutely hilariously bad it is.But this film was terrible, the lowest score, one or minus one, it had little ironic quality (laugh at the film funny) and lacked any true quality like characters, story or acting (oh child actors). It was a feminist dream movie, and I wish I hadn't suffered through it, the female power message was ham fisted and brought the film down by at least five points, but worst was the use of what appeared to be stock images of whales, and that was the better parts of the film. The perfect female character of the little girl wound me up, and her grandfather committed so many flip flops of reject to his granddaughter, love and then contempt.The way how the Grandfather went about the choosing of the next chieftain was insane, then the little girls refusal to not simply give up being a chieftain, a position she had never been offered and appeared to want simply out of entitlement or desire, she never showed any true leader qualities, and if the fantasy bullshit in the film is to be believed, then all she did in the entire thing was get a bunch or whales killed, yeah.Also a plot point they seemingly ignored was the fact that the father abandoned his child to a man he knew did not want her, and then even after stating 'he had his child now' after the loss of his wife, he decided to move to Germany and abandon his child, when did we jump that leap of logic. Plus back to the grandfather why not chose the other son, the son that remained in their tribe, he seamed to be capable of being leader, let he was ignored for the promised son of the eldest boy. In any line of succession you have contingencies, I'm I to believe the grandfather, chose to embark on a ten year wait for his eldest son who abandon his tribe to return to produce a male heir, when he did not produce the promised grandson he, rather than chose his second son, chose to train boys and he failed.The way the write the film unfortunately failed to deliver suspense, with the granddaughter being so empowered, I new she win, would have been surprising to see her humbled, and might have given the movie something. The shooting of the film felt very dated, when the girl sees the whale, we cut to the whale under water, as the whale in the stock imagery comes to the surface we cut to the reaction shot to the granddaughter, no whale is seen resurfaces from an over the shoulder shot or anything, nothing and made the scene feel very cheep. I got the vibe of a low budget film, and couple this with the view locations in the film, it was bland.Overall I would say this film sucked, with bad acting, boring setting and a weirdo almost nonsensical plot, heavy with its girl power message I would not recommend it. If you looking for a decent new Zealand film check out Once were warriors or what becomes of the broken hearted. Not the best films but you get great acting and good locations, and a plot that is not unbelievable. The messages in those films are also more universal and less restricted by agendas.

Whale Rider is a really good film, to rate this film, I will give it an eight out of ten. It is very impressive that how Paikea has the courage to conquer the ill whales. Although it is dangerous, Paikea still chooses to save the whales and impress his grandfather. This minority style of life is very unique, it's culture can not be find in any other place in the world. How the chief of the tribe is inheriting is also interesting. From this film, the audience can get the global perspective of how a minority group live in New Zealand. However, the reason why I am giving this movie an eight out of ten is that I feel there is way too much descriptions about how Paikea's grandfather does not like to give the role to her, but too less about how Paikea is solving the problem with those stranding Whales. I feel the director should add more descriptions about how Paikea get the trust from his grandfather and how she becomes the inheritor of the minority group. Anyway, these are all my personal ideas. One of the main themes in this film is gender. This was also a major theme in the United States in the past --- men are more superior than women. This is relevant to this society's culture in the film because the chief of the tribe is usually inherited to male, but the main character Paikea is a female, causes a lot of issues. Paikea is a good evidence to support gender equality.

Whale Rider is definitely one of the best movies I've seen in a long time. The movie used very artistic camera angles and the acting was very good. I also thought it was wonderful that the director wanted to show off the Maori traditions and add in a lot of those really cool details you would get from an actual visit to New Zealand. Besides the awesome culture in the film, the movie was very well written and I thought it went into great detail about the story line, plus the characters were very well thought out and developed. Though, I did think that the ending was very dramatic and even a little cheesy. Plus, I thought that it was very odd that the grandfather, just all of the sudden was happy to have a granddaughter instead of a grandson. Though, the story line does kind of justifies it. With that being said, I still think that Whaler Rider is a great movie and I think it deserves a lot more "mainstream" publicity. 9/10 !!!

I did not like this film very much. This movie seemed to force a gender issue, where there was not a real need for one. I liked the concept of the whale rider, and how the Grandfather would raise the youth of the area into a whale rider. I thought the grandfather not allowing his daughter to train and practically banishing her was excessive. The grandfather was quick tempered and only wanted a grandson, so the entire movie was based around the grandfather's disliking of his daughter. In my opinion, this movie was too focused on the subject of the daughter not being the person that her grandfather wanted her to be, rather than it focusing on what she wanted. Some people could view this movie as a break from social and gender norms, but I saw it as a girl that couldn't do anything to break her gender norms until she risked her life to save the whales. Overall, this movie was not very enjoyable for me, mainly because of the dull plot and sub-par acting.