Data
Title: The Neverending Story
Year: 1984
Length: 94 minutes
Director: Wolfgang Petersen
Writers: Wolfgang Petersen & Herman Weigel, with Robert Easton, based on the book by Michael Ende
Starring: Barret Oliver, Noah Hathaway, Alan Oppenheimer
Music: Klaus Doldinger & Giorgio Moroder
My reaction
Synopsis: a boy reads a fantasy book about a quest
How I saw it: on video many times (have on DVD), most recently yesterday
Concept: Good.
Story: Great.
Characters: Indifferent. The leads are pretty bad, but most of the secondary characters are great.
Dialog: Indifferent. Very inconsistent. Some bits are great, some are terrible.
Pacing: Good.
Cinematography: Bad.
Special effects/design: Good. This is a hard call. The design is pretty good. The special effects are bad, but with a lot of character. And look at those stills - if the puppets never moved, they would look f***ing amazing. Still gives me chills when Morla's head emerges.
Acting: Bad.
Music: Terrible.
Subjective Rating: 9/10 (One of my favorites). I don't know if it's nostalgia that makes me love this movie, or if it's just because I put such a higher priority on writing than on anything else in movies. It's probably the former, but I don't want to admit it. I mean, come on, this movie's awesome, right?
Objective Rating:
Loved this film as a kid. The whole production design was great but oh how it has dated now. But, like you say, nostalgia does a lot for a movie, and this film gets a lot of nostalgic love from me.
ReplyDeleteThe more I think about it, the less I think nostalgia has to do with it in my case. There are a lot of movies I loved as a kid that I couldn't stand to watch now. On the other hand, childhood memories certainly help when you're supposed to think of a puppet with a lazy eye as a terrifying wolf monster.
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