it did with The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, which is ironic considering the same person did the voice in both films. The narration hurts this film. Another movie where narration hurts was Blade Runner. I had heard that Harrison Ford was against the use of narration and rightfully so because Blade Runner is a much better movie minus the narration spoon feeding of the plot.
shareI don't know any of the other movies you mention, but I agree that the narration in this movie nearly ruined it. It was the worst part of the movie - even worse than her falling in love with her stalker.
shareThis movie would have been impossible without the narration. You would need ten minutes of doctors and experiments and dialogue like "The volts seem to have made her telomeres more flexible, which means she might never age!" Better to have that imparted by a godlike offscreen voice, rather than contriving a reason for a character to utter it.
sharePossible spoilers ahead.
This movie would have been impossible without the narration. You would need ten minutes of doctors and experiments and dialogue like "The volts seem to have made her telomeres more flexible, which means she might never age!"
As soon as the movie was over (despite both of us rather enjoying it), my wife and I both immediately expressed the same sentiment in that the narration nearly ruined the movie.
I didn't mind the fact that it had narration. I thought it worked. I just thought it was the narrator himself. He was terrible. I felt like he was completely disconnected from what we were seeing on screen and he must have watched something else entirely. His persona was an utter mismatch for the subject matter.
The movie, for the most part, took a rather serious approach to its subject matter and was a romance with some rather interesting sci-fi prospects. And yet, the whole time he came across explaining it like it was some fun, whimsical affair, and if you just watched it a little longer, you were right on the cusp of being let in on the punchline of a good joke.
I prefer narration rather than a character constantly spouting out exposition.
The film was almost like a modern fairy tale, therefore I felt like the narration fitted very nicely with the quirkiness of the movie itself
Same here. I loved the fairy tale aspect of it.
shareI have to agree on the plus side. I loved the narration.
As a matter of fact, I really hadn't even noticed this movie as even being one that I'd pay attention to. I'd happened to have it on doing something else, when the narration started.
It was the narration itself that hooked me into this movie. It was the narration that allowed me to suspend disbelief and believe that this could actually happen. I do think that the writer should have set the discovery of Electron Compression in DNA as farther ahead than 2035 to give the movie a longer range, but that's a minor nit.
Not only that, but I think Hugh Ross as the narrator knocked it out of the park. In fact, I have some videos I'll be creating coming up here in the next few months and I will be contacting him to get his standard rates for VO work, and see if he can't narrate some of my videos. It's that good, and his voice is fascinating to me, especially when explaining the concepts he was explaining.
The great part was that it was so sparsely and well-used, in my opinion. It didn't keep popping up in each new scene, but seemed to be perfectly timed exactly when it was necessary, and receded back when the story and normal character dialogue was enough to propel the movement forward.
Guess it just goes to show that an audience is not a single monolithic group... but is comprised of a number of individuals who each have different tastes and preferences.
Without the narrator, I doubt this movie would have even piqued my interest. With the narration, it's quickly becoming one of my favorite fantasy love stories.
————
You're makin'... me... beat... up... GRASS!
The narration and explaining everything to death totally killed this movie. And they even tried to make the "never aging" thing based on science, it was totally stupid.
This movie could have easily been made without the narrator. And they wouldn't have had to resort to "exposure through dialogue" either like somebody commented that that would have to be done if there would be no narrator. One could have made this movie without both. Not everything has to be spoonfed and explained to death, let the audience figure it out, or not, it doesn't matter with this film, either way the audience would have understood what caused her to not age and then back to aging, and in the end the why not aging is irrelevant in this movie. 2/10.
The narration sounded like it was trying to be as clever and poignant as it was in "Magnolia," but it failed miserably and only succeeded in alienating me even more than the clunky screenplay and obvious (and heavy-handed) directing already had. At the end, when the narrator actually tells us what we just saw, I started wondering just how stupid the producers think the audience is, since I'm betting many of us knew how this film would end pretty early on (and all of us were right, too).
As for "Blade Runner," I don't believe that the narration was originally part of the movie but the studio wanted it so the audience would understand the film. Of course, in the Director's Cut, it's not there, and the film is so much better because it's gone.
I didn't care for the narrator either. It kind of took away from the movie. Maybe it was the voice too. I didn't care for the voice. Sounded cheesy
shareNarration didn't really bother me. Since it was really late when I watched this movie it actually worked in my favor! It kept me from thinking so much!? With our without narration I like this movie. I love the actors and cheesy as it may have been actually liked the fairytale feeling!
shareI like the narration. I thought it show how burnt out he had become as a the blade runner.
shareAlso the narration reminded me of the film noir of the 40's that use narration often to get inside the head of the protagonist.
share