Movie Review of The New World

The New World, starring Colin Farrell, Christopher Plummer, Christian Bale, and Q’orianka Kilcher, is quite possibly one of the worst movies I’ve seen in a long time. I cannot believe it was nominated for an Oscar in Cinematography in 2005, because that was one of my biggest issues with the movie. It was also boring and confusing.

The New World is supposedly based on the true story of Pocahontas and her relationship with Captain John Smith. I chose it for a date-night movie to watch with my husband because the DVD case says that it’s a romance. There is a neat connection between the two main characters, but there is no real resolve to their love. As a romance goes, the movie stays pretty tame as there is not really a “love scene” per se. There is a hint of a physical relationship, but it takes place along a scattered piecemeal of scenes.

One of my biggest complaints is how the movie jumps around from one scene to the next seemingly without a completion of a single thought and no cohesiveness. Each scene ends without a resolution and jumps to an unrelated thought. Many of the scenes have little in the way of dialogue, and most of the time the characters are either staring off into the landscape (which is beautiful), or gazing at one another in a way that indicates that they are communicating but without words. The two main characters also seem to “think” the dialogue rather than speak to one another.

Another issue I have with the way the movie is presented is that it’s nearly impossible to determine if the scene that is playing out before the viewer is taking place in the here and now or is a memory of what has recently transpired, or even as a wish for what could have been.

The main characters are handsome and beautiful, and the story does seem to follow the commonly accepted historical nature of the tale. Also, I like that it was filmed within a few miles of where the original events actually took place. All things considered, I would not waste time sitting through 135 minutes of the The New World. Sorry New Line Cinema, not your best work!