MovieChat Forums > The Wild Blue Yonder (2007) Discussion > Dreadful. Id rather watch paint dry.

Dreadful. Id rather watch paint dry.

posted 17 years ago by TheHypnotron
18 replies | jump to latest

This was about as bad as watching home movies. I love films in general and I was very patient with this one, but one can only take so much. I give it 2/10. This film is nothing more than a bunch of painfully long archival space shuttle and underwater footage with a weak fantasy narrative told by Dourif. The whole thing can be summed up quite completely in a couple of paragraphs yet they manage to drag this thing out to 80 minutes.

Further, I'm not a fan of the Sardinian music they were playing and that made the boring space shuttle and underwater footage even more horrible. And make no mistake, the footage isn't even interesting footage. You're watching people floating around the spaceshuttle doing next to nothing for half the film. Most of the rest is underwater staring at the same stuff for very long periods. Seriously WTF? At least if it was cool underwater footage, but the things we were forced to watch were so completely uninteresting and uneventful it was borderline torture.

What id really like to know is how much this supposedly cost to produce. The credits contained an unexpectedly long list of mouths to feed. If I didn't know better, I'd say this film was some sort of scam just to burn money.

[–] deanowest 17 years ago

your post was useless. in fact, you seemed to spend more time on this empty post than thinking about the film.

scam to make money? how would that work, since it wasn't officially released in the US?

What is this film saying about the balance between truth and fiction? what is it saying about our chances to solve world problems thru' off world solutions?
and just relax and let the images take over.

[–] taurusred 17 years ago

"Your post was useless?" Actually he summed it up rather well, but that's just my opinion. I tried to like this movie but... I just couldn't.

[–] bartblommaert 11 years ago

It's possible it's "a scam" because of some tax loophole in the German law.

Uwe Boll has exploited this for years. It's no secret or anything. Plenty on Google on the subject.

I'm *not* saying that is the case here, but it's very much possible to do so

[–] backofthevan 17 years ago

I completely agree with you, box-11, what a ludicrous waste of time. Yes, if you enjoy watching painfully long and boring video of the occupants of a space shuttle, or have a PhD in astrophysics or mathematics or celestial mechanics or whatever it all was, you might find this interesting. If I continue I'll just be repeating what you said and what was well said by Kevin Purcell's User Comments.

And Deanowest, why is Box-11's post "useless"? He/she was expressing an opinion, just as valid as yours, by the way.

To me, the soundtrack was the best thing about this film. Otherwise, a total stinko.

[–] CheekyPuppy 17 years ago

I thought the music was haunting and the underwater footage was beautiful; then, most people have shorter attention spans than I do, sadly.
It's true that the story seemed pieced together and nonsensical, but it seems to me that was the effect Herzog was going for. I think he was focusing on the wonder and meloncholy of the abandoned planet (both of them), and the disrespect of humans for nature, as well as the idea of truth and fiction; in the sense that myths and archetypes are "more than true" and so spinning a tale that resonates in that way off of an image that would normally be seen in a more pedestrian light is a journey into deeper truth... a rediscovery of our home planet in its original beauty.

Just throwing out some random thoughts.

No PJ, No Hobbit http://www.petitiononline.com/hobnow/petition.html

[–] deanowest 17 years ago

backoftheeven wrote: "And Deanowest, why is Box-11's post "useless"? He/she was expressing an opinion, just as valid as yours, by the way."

Sorry, that post was supposed to say: "USELESS TO ME."

and yeah, I loved the music too. Ernst Reisejer is one of my favorites musicans.

[–] inselhase 17 years ago

i agree with you realy, i am usually great fan of wener herzogs movies but this one was realy painful to watch.and you can tell the message of the film also in a short movie .

insel

[–] chip-heads 17 years ago

I also couldn't stand the film. I flipped it off after 30minutes. The music in the 'space shuttle' was horrid. I thought the story was amusing in some parts, i'm going to try and finish it but I am not expecting much. I saw the DVD on the shelf and read the back and said'cool, space, underwater, music and a interesting story' the shuttle shots blew. I have seen better NASA footage from user sites.

[–] robhumanick 17 years ago

Id rather watch paint dry.

The first sign of a scam artist at work. As Monty Python would say, you're only provided contradiction, not an argument.

http://projectionbooth.blogspot.com
Strange, what love does.

[–] bumfrombrooklyn1 17 years ago

go drink the paint instead of watching it dry it would be a better use of your time than watching a film you didn't like then spending three paragraphs criticizing it and starting *beep* get out of here

[–] no1ninja 16 years ago

Totally agree..

What the hell was he thinking? Who the hell would want to watch this again?

Seriously, I bet all the people that say this was a great movie would rather put a bullet through their head than watch this again.

A good movie can be watched and re-watched... this thing is god awful.

[–] salmo365 16 years ago

i so so so wanted to enjoy this movie, but it just left me dry and I wandered away from the TV after 30 minutes.

The excessive use of stock video was the turn off.

i could have watched the actor's monolgue for the entire duration

[–] sthm 15 years ago

Theres something going wrong when Herzog tries to make a sci-fi film.
And i think that's one of Herzog's weak points.
I liked Encounters at the End of the World better as a "sci-fi" film.
In general Herzog is so much better when he deals with subjects like Death, Self Destruction and Torture

[–] ptitzz 15 years ago

I agree. I was actually quite exited about the whole concept. As an aerospace engineering student and someone with interest in astronomy. But execution was just plain silly. The whole footage was boring, *facts* were speculations, two dudes speaking about orbit mechanics looked more like two primary school teachers than scientists, alien that goes crazy about how much his people *sucked* was just painful to watch.

I give it 3 out of 10. It really took some effort to make such a good idea into such an uninteresting movie.