Flatland the Film
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Movie Reviews of Flatland the Film
Movie Review: Modern adaptation that runs too long
Summary: 3 Stars
Now having reread the book and watched the film, I felt the director did a good job overall modernizing the story (although the political undertones were somewhat overdone). The biggest issue I have is that I couldn't get myself to watch the entire movie in one sitting. As I watched, I constantly felt that some seconds could be trimmed here, a longer scene gone there... and in the end, I think you could cut the running time by at least 10 minutes (to possibly as much as 20) and it would have made much easier to watch.Movie Review: Brevity is the soul of wit.
Summary: 2 Stars
I'm a mathematician by education, and I thoroughly enjoyed E. A. Abbott's book when I read it a couple of decades ago. Flatland the film stays close to the mathematical ideas of the book, though the plot wanders astray. That variance doesn't interfere with enjoyment of the film.
What does interfere is the length of the film. It's way too long, drawn out, and frankly boring. I wanted to see how this classic of geometry played out. But for that avocational interest, I would have ejected this disk way before the end. This film wants editing, and the editor should cut it down to 1/3 of its present length. Part of the charm of the book was its small size, but the film has lost that virtue.
A much smaller sin is the stylized depiction of violence: the blood running from the figures, the repeated attacks on the opposition senator, the massacre by machine gun from the hovering aircraft, the nuclear explosion. Even if the animators did cut their professional teeth on shooter video games, these elements are irrelevant to the central mathematical message of the story, in their fulsomeness they have little relevance to the plot, they weren't present in the book, they are patently offensive, and they make the film questionable for viewing by children. This alone would cost the film a star.
The silent panels of text contain, in some cases, important messages for the story. In the remake, audible narration should overlay these panels. If I wanted to read, I would buy the book.
The beauty and technical quality of the animation and sound is superb, and the makers chose an excellent soundtrack.
db
Movie Review: disappointing - other reviews set too high an expectation
Summary: 2 Stars
Despite the mostly rave reviews here, the movie is really not very good. The graphics are not up to today's standards for computer graphics (the cover art is pretty cheesey itself and the movie is generally worse) such as we see in commercial computer-generated movies but also in independent efforts like Animusic I and II.
Worse, though, the story is not well written - there is no subtlety whatsoever. The deliberate campiness of the written narration is overdone and ends up being irritating in its self-awareness ("wait for it", "wait for it", ...). The satire of the story is too black and white with no nuance. The characters are blind dogmatists who cite the law as if it mattered to their daily lives, which was probably not true of the populace even in Abbott's day and is certainly not true today where dogmatists found their beliefs on intricate rationalizations that can make a scary kind of sense. Some may want to attribute the weakness of the story to the nature of writing satire, which is a difficult genre to satisfy general audiences. Nevertheless, I found the story simply too sophomoric in its black and white characterizations and unmotivated plot.
The acting of the main character is decent when he expresses confusion, but is weak when he is expressing anger or frustration. The acting of the other characters is simply 'flat', even the sphere.
Movie Review: As disappointing as the Movie
Summary: 2 Stars
Like Flatland the Movie, the Film is also disappointing. It is not as slick as the Movie; it is more experimental and less conservative. But it's far too long and it is often tedious. And as far as content goes, it is as unoriginal as the Movie.Movie Review: I'll wait for the movie as opposed to the film
Summary: 2 Stars
Great graphics, terrible story line. Way far from the original book. I helped a little with "Flatland the Movie" and it's much better, although much more expensive for the educational edition.