James Wan's "AQUAMAN"

Movie review by Dennis D. McDonald

It helps to revert to your 12 year old persona to really appreciate AQUAMAN

This movie is insane. It’s a real comic book of a movie. It reminds me of childhood when my cousins would every month or so bring over and leave a stack of comic books they had collected and read. I’d read every one from cover to cover. I was especially fond of DC superheroes and DC science fiction.

AQUAMAN is like the distilled essence of those hours-long orgies of superhero and SF nonsense. I knew they were ridiculous then. But they sure were fun and they helped prepare the way for my life long interest in science fiction novels and movies.

2018’s AQUAMAN is a wildly imperfect film — too much CGI, hackneyed plot, simplistic dialog, over the top acting.

And yet…

I loved this movie. Wow, there’s a lot to see, especially in the second half with its massive and over the top (and almost indescribable) undersea battle. Orgies of CGI have tended in the past to put me to sleep but there is enough original and just plain weird things to see here that even the implausibility of it all gets lost in a phantasmagoria of sound, light, and three dimensional roller-coaster motion.

The movie also boasts one the the best house-to-house chases and battles I think has ever been filmed — the Italy sequence. Stuntwork and editing are awesome. It also helps that you never have difficulty following the Atlantean lady with the red hair as she and Aquaman are chased over, under, around and through a picturesque seaside warren of houses, shops, and streets.

Bottom line: It’s a fun movie.

Review copyright (c) 2019 by Dennis D. McDonald