The Incredible Petrified World (1959) - Descend into the movie world of Jerry Warren

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Several natural sensations and a buxom blond in the grasp of a giant octopus are teased on this poster for Jerry Warren's The Incredible Petrified World

A team of four descend into the sea in a diving bell, but when the wire snaps they manage to rescue themselves into an enormous underwater cave, where they fall upon a kind of caveman, who thinks they will never escape!

The Incredible Petrified World is written by John W. Steiner and produced and directed by Jerry Warren (Man Beast (1956)).

John Carradine (House of Dracula (1945)) is the engineer behind the catastrophic underwater mishap, but his character immediately gives up, which is very inauspicious as far as our sympathy for his character goes. Lighting, sound and image quality stinks here. The opening has a fascinating (archive footage) octopus/shark fight, and the idea of the lost underwater world is pure adventure and exciting. But the acting and dialog is also lame here. In the end everyone become friends again. The Incredible Petrified World is a bizarre trip to the ultra-low budget world of Jerry Warren.

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: Unknown

Box office: Unknown

= Uncertain

[The Incredible Petrified World was released 12 November (South Carolina) and runs 67 minutes. Carradine was paid 100 $ a week for his performance. Phyllis Coates (Cattle Empire (1958)) was reportedly persuaded by ex-boyfriend Warren to be the film's main female star with a promise that the film would not be released in California. Coates was never paid for her performance, and the film was released in California, where it seriously damaged her acting career. Shooting took place around March 1957 in New Mexico, Arizona and California. The 'monsters' teased on the film's poster are not to be found in the film, as the monster suit Warren had made was deemed too bad by even him and was thrown away during production. The film went unreleased for more than 2½ years, before Warren released it in South Carolina, then North Carolina, and then wider, on a double bill with his Teenage Zombies (1959). Internationally, the film is only listed as having had a release in Argentina in 1962. Cost and gross details are regrettably not to be found. The film is now in public domain and can be seen and downloaded free and legally right here. Warren returned with Teenage Zombies. Carradine returned in 5 TV credits prior to his theatrical return in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1960). 1.3k+ IMDb users have given The Incredible Petrified World a 3.1/10 average rating.]

What do you think of The Incredible Petrified World?

Meg 2: The Trench (2023) - More ridiculous fun in Wheatley's game monster adventure

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Reliable star Jason Statham escapes the primordial mega-shark on this eye-popping poster for Ben Wheatley's Meg 2: The Trench

 

Passionate ocean protector Jonas Taylor ventures deep beneath the surface with his associates, where they find a secret mining operation in the trench. Here megalodons and other primordial monsters live.

 

Meg 2: The Trench is written by Jon Hoeber, Erich Hoeber and Dean Georgaris (The Meg (2018), all), adapting The Trench (1999) by Steve Alten (Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror (1997)), and directed by great British filmmaker Ben Wheatley (Down Terrace (2009)). It is the sequel to The Meg (2018).

After a smashing dino-age opening that establishes the hilariously ridiculous tone of this action adventure effectively, the film spends a long time in the dark, way underwater trench, and down there it gets a bit long in the tooth, (pun intended, sorry!) It's mostly CGI down there, and sometimes hard to make out what is going on, but things brighten up in more ways than one after this section, which also outlines the film's human villains:

Sienna Guillory (Remember Me (2019)) is fun as the wealthy evil minx behind the costly operations, and Sergio Peris-Mencheta (Rambo: Last Blood (2019)) has got a blessed mug that recalls legendary villain actor Robert Davi: Similarly, Peris-Mencheta delights in the villainry, screaming and fighting to my unspoiled delight. The film also has Jing Wu (The Climbers/Pan deng zhe (2019)) in the big part as a very smiling, risk-taking general manager of the meg-holding facility, and Wu wins over audiences with a highly energetic and likable performance here. The fun continues with returning Cliff Curtis (Training Day (1999)) and Page Kennedy (Same Difference (2019)), game as can be. SPOILER All of them clown around without end as megalodons, a giant octopus and some vicious gator-like dinosaurs attack on Fun Island, a resort vacation spot so shallow and ridiculous that all can recoil in its violent unraveling. Part of the fun of Meg is observing the idiocy of modern man come undone by beastly nature, a savage revenge from the deep. In this film a shot of two obese tourists in a 'biking boat' with obscene drinks getting swallowed up by the monster shark is an especially spectacular highlight.

Jason Statham (Spy (2015)) is back in the no-nonsense lead, a likable guy without much varnish or nooks to him - but he sure is good against a meg! There are more colors and kinetic energy to this sequel, a film that beats the original in ridiculousness and simple-minded, gleeful fun. 

 
Related posts:

 
The Meg (2018) - Moments of cruel fun enliven Turteltaub's monster shark feast
Ben Wheatley: 2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED V]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]

A Field in England (2013) or, Shit and Thistles 

Top 10: Best drama-thrillers reviewed by Film Excess to date 
Kill List (2011) - Wheatley's jaw-breaking, great genre-mixer 

 

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 129-139 mil. $ (different reports)

Box office: 256.9 mil. $ and counting 

= Too early to say

[Meg 2: The Trench premiered 9 June (Shanghai International Film Festival) and runs 116 minutes. Shooting took place in Los Angeles, California, Hong Kong and in Thailand. The film opened #2, behind Barbie, to a 30 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it has just spent its 2nd weekend at #4. The film is making as much in China at the moment, (it is officially a US/Chinese co-production.) The first film made impressive 530.4 mil. $, a target that the sequel likely won't reach. It has yet to open in South Korea (August 15) and Japan (August 25). The film should cross 350 mil. $ to be considered successful but is likely to get a sequel nonetheless. Wheatley is slated to return with Freak Shift (pre-production). Statham returns in Expend4bles (2023). Meg 2: The Trench is rotten at 28 % with a 4.50/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

 

What do you think of Meg 2: The Trench?

The Incredible Story of the Giant Pear/Den Utrolige Historie om den Kæmpestore Pære (2017) - A high-spirited, charming, family-friendly animation adaptation

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A light-hearted, wild adventure is promised by this colorful poster for Amalie Næsby Fick, Jørgen Lerdam and Philip Einstein Lipski's The Incredible Story of the Giant Pear

In Sun Town, popular mayor J.B. disappears inexplicably one evening. When friends Mitcho and Sebastian receive a message in a bottle from him containing a seed, an adventure to a mysterious island for his rescue soon begins!

The Incredible Story of the Giant Pear is a family-friendly adventure comedy animation written by Bo Hr. Hansen (Speed Walking/Kapgang (2014)), based on the same-titled 2012 children's book by Jakob Martin Strid (Vi Hader Alting!! (1997)), and directed by Amalie Næsby Fick, Jørgen Lerdam (Hugo the Movie Star/Jungledyret 2 - Den Store Filmhelt (1996)) and Philip Einstein Lipski (Ronal the Barbarian/Ronal Barbaren (2011)).
The adventure is a classic Strid creation of untamed imagination and a healthy dose of humor, featuring pathetic pirates, a bureaucratic, power-hungry vice-mayor villain, a strange, lonely dragon-ship captain, ghosts and giant pears. It is never too dramatic for little children and still has the ability to entertain and make bigger children and adults laugh as well.
The original Danish voice cast do very well, and Peter Frödin (Motello (1998)) as the absentminded professor is especially funny. The animation of Sun Town is cute and funny, and the storm portion, ghost section and mysterious island also have well-made looks. The characters, including leads Mitcho and Sebastian, who are a kiddie cat and an elephant without that fact ever raising any eyebrows, are sweet and well-defined, and the film's showing the insides of vessels as cut open in the middle may be inspired from Wes Anderson films like The Darjeeling Limited (2007) and probably especially his oceanic adventure The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004).
The 'camera' is mostly fixed low near the leads' perspective and don't move around much, even when it would have been exciting. Budget restraints and Danish animation custom may have had a say in this. There's just one small song in the movie, (by the pirates), and it could have been a real kicker, but isn't really, unfortunately.
SPOILER In the film's most dramatic moment, of course towards the very end, Mitcho and Sebastian are caught together far underwater, and Mitcho helps swim her friend to the surface. They are clearly really in danger, but the scene as they surface strangely doesn't reflect this, perhaps made so with the youngest audiences in mind, - but it is a bit of a strange conclusion.
These minor drawbacks don't change that The Incredible Story of the Giant Pear is a delight and enormously recommendable cinema fare for the whole family.

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: Unknown
Box office: Unknown
= Unknown
[The Incredible Story of the Giant Pear premiered 12 October (Denmark) and runs 78 minutes. The film has received support from the Danish Film Institute. It opened #1 in Denmark, its only market to date, where it sold 138k tickets in the 12-22 October Autumn break period, more than 60k more tickets than the #2 film, The Snowman. The film only has one foreign release scheduled yet, in Hungary on 8 February 2018. The film's budget has not been made public. 61 IMDb users have given the film a 7.3/10 average rating.]

What do you think of The Incredible Story of the Giant Pear?

Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) or, Gill-Man Begins!

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One of the colorful, sexually charged posters for Jack Arnold's Creature from the Black Lagoon

QUICK REVIEW:

A rock mission on the Amazon river gets altered dramatically, when they discover that a local legend, 'the gill man', is not merely a legend but a real, strange, strong, homicidal creature!

Creature features neat photography (by William E. Snyder (The Conqueror (1956))), including underwater footage, but it is a severely dated movie.
Its heavy motif score gets repeated almost in eternity to the monster's hand, rising up... Score by uncredited Henry Mancini (The Square Jungle (1955)), Hans J. Salter (Red Sundown (1955)) and Herman Stein (The Mole People (1956)).
The film is not really scary, but often involuntarily humorous and also not exactly wild in, for instance, its character inventions, (script by Harry Essex (Dragnet (1947)) and Arthur A. Ross (The Great Race (1965))).
Creature from the Black Lagoon is directed by 50's sci-fi champ Jack Arnold (Tarantula (1955)); it is an entertaining but essentially overrated monster horror sci-fi.

A wonderful PR still for Jack Arnold's Creature from the Black Lagoon

Watch the original trailer here

Cost: Unknown
Box office: 1.3 mil. $
= Uncertainty
[The film premiered in Detroit in February and then opened on a regional basis on different dates, in 'flat' form as well as in 3D in larger downtown theaters, although the 50's 3D phenomenon was already dying out at the time. Fans of the film have been dreaming of seeing it in decent 3D for decades, which seems to have been realized in 2012. The film has two initial sequels, and a reboot has been ricocheting around Hollywood for decades now without happening.]

What do you think of Creature from the Black Lagoon?

Creature From the Haunted Sea (1961) - Cheap, fast, amusing spoof/spy thriller/creature feature

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Fetching poster, although nothing of the kind visualized here happens in Roger Corman's Creature From the Haunted Sea, where the monster has a normal human-sized hand (because it's a human in a terrible monster suit)

QUICK REVIEW:

Creature From the Haunted Sea presents a really far out story about an undercover agent, a Cuban treasure and a homicidal sea monster. - It's a strange film!
Creature From the Haunted Sea is a hopelessly primitive genre hybrid, part horror, part spy movie, and part spoof comedy (of gangster and monster movies). It is made in an irreverent tone that makes a good deal of what happens amusing for people who are familiar with these genres and/or with filmmaker Roger Corman's (The Fall of the House of Usher (1960)) body of work.
This film has many weird and funny elements in it: A murder with a plunger. Two leading roles who throughout the movie communicate in animal sounds. The 'shocking' monster, which mostly looks like a person in a bad Halloween suit, (because that's what it basically is.) Underwater scenes with a lot of animals. And then of course the extensive dialog in Spanish, which is very funny.
Some may sit back after watching Creature From the Haunted Sea with a feeling of 'why?'. Corman probably would answer, 'why not!?!' - If you can make money making a movie like this, why the heck wouldn't you?!? (A very good point, I think.)
The film is in public domain now and available for free and legal watch here.
After a gif of the "unspeakable secret of the SEA OF LOST SHIPS", some hysterical trivia about the movie will follow:

The monster suit, on terrifying display up here, was reportedly devised from a wet suit, some moss, lots of Brillo pads, tennis balls for the eyes, ping pong balls for the pupils, pipe-cleaners for claws and oilcloth for slime effect.
Apart from the funny Spanish in the film, a lot of the English dialog is hilarious as well. Examples:

Sparks Moran: [as Carmelita embraces and kisses him] As a trained espionage agent I could tell that she was attracted to me. 

Sparks Moran: [narrating] The first move in the great conspiracy had been made. The Cuban treasury was now in the gentle hands of Renzo Capetto, the most trustworthy man ever to be deported from Sicily. They thought they were home-free, but little did they know that I, Sparks Moran, was an American agent. Luckily, I had managed to work my way onto the crew by posing as a notorious gun machine burglar from Chicago. My real name is XK-15.

This often narrating character 'Sparks Moran' is played by Robert Towne, the later in life screenwriter legend of Chinatown (1974), The Firm (1993), Mission: Impossible II (2000) etc. (Towne is credited as 'Edward Wain'.)

The movie was written in three days, based on a script that Corman had already filmed twice before, as Naked Paradise and Beast From Haunted Cave. The film was shot back-to-back between The Last Woman on Earth and Battle of Blood Island, two films that Corman was shooting in Puerto Rico for tax incentive reasons.
The film was shot in 5 days, with Mexican extras being paid 1 $ to participate. The score for Creature of the Haunted Sea is by Fred Katz, another wild-man, who allegedly sold Corman the same score for seven different films, including Creature From the Haunted Sea, A Bucket of Blood, The Wasp Woman and The Little Shop of Horrors.

Related reviews.

Roger Corman:  Philadelphia (1993) - AIDS and homosexuality acknowledged in great drama (actor)
The Wild Angels (1966) - Young biker rebels deliver a counter-culture punch in Corman's hands
House of Usher/The Fall of the House of Usher/The Mysterious House of Usher (1960) - Corman's exuberant first house pf Poeish horror

Watch the self-parodying, strange trailer here

Budget: Unknown
Box office: Unknown
= Unknown

Did you see Creature From the Haunted Sea?
What did you think?
What do you think of Roger Corman and his cheap, fast movies?

Benny's Bathtub/Bennys Badekar (1971) - A boy's fantasy adventure in Danish animation classic

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Book cover for the novelization of Flemming Quist Møller & Jannik Hastrup's Benny's Bathtub

QUICK REVIEW:

Benny lives in one of the 60s project buildings with his mother, who doesn't understand his fantasies or games. Sent down to play by the marshes, he finds a tadpole that he brings back home and sets free in his bathtub ...
Benny's Bathtub is a classic, Danish animated short film of 41 minutes from another time in the world and in Danish animation; a more idealistic, free-spirited, creative time.
With wonderful, funny voices from among others Jytte Abildstrøm (Hannibal & Jerry (1997)) and Peter Belli (Flying Grandmother/Flyvende Farmor (2001)) as the octopus who gives a jazz performance. The catchy music, - the film features musical numbers, - is by Hans-Henrik Ley (Cirkeline (1967-70)) as well as Kenny Drew and Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen.
The style is anarchistic, - free and brimming with Danish humor and candor.
The film offers a splendid insight into the fantasy universe of a boy, and today also stands as a treasured, well-aging monument of another time in Denmark. A colorful and trippy family adventure that one might only wish was longer.
It is directed by Jannik Hastrup (Samson and Sally/Samson og Sally (1984)) and Flemming Quist Møller (Jungle Jack/Jungledyret (1993)). The veteran directing pair are in post-production at the moment with their second film about The Bicycle Mosquito/Cykelmyggen entitled The Bicycle Mosquito and the Mini-Beetle/Cykelmyggen og Minibillen (2014).

Related post:

 
Top 10: Best fantasy movies reviewed by Film Excess to date



Benny follows his tadpole on the back of a sea-horse on a fantastic adventure in his own bathtub

In lieu of a trailer, here is one of my favorite scenes from Benny's Bathtub, wherein Benny meets an ornithologist by the marshes. Even if you don't understand the hilarious Danish voices, the animation is pretty great in itself

Budget: Unknown
Box office: Unknown
= Unknown

Any fond memories of Benny's Bathtub?
Or other old animation films?

The Little Mermaid (1989) - The fantastic, romantic return of Disney animation

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The colorful and infectiously happy poster for Ron Clements and John Musker's The Little Mermaid

 

The Little Mermaid is a Disney classic based on the same-titled 1837 fairytale by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen (The Snowman (1861)). It was the last Disney film to be done with only hand-painted cel animation and analog film work. This required more than 1 million hand-made drawings. The enormous effort paid off as a hugely successful fairy tale animation that marked the start of the 'Disney Renaissance'. Disney animation had fared poorly during the 80s, but Mermaid turned things around, and in the following decade's renaissance, Disney was revived to its former glory within animation with major film successes like Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), The Lion King (1994), Pocahontas (1995) and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996). Tarzan (1999) is thought of as the end of the Disney Renaissance.

Ariel is an unhappy mermaid, who idolizes humans against her father King Triton's demands. She falls in love with the human Prince Eric and makes a Faustian deal with the sea witch octopus Ursula to be a human for 3 days. If she succeeds in getting a kiss of true love from Eric within that time frame, Ariel will be freed from Ursula's eternal bondage, which also entails that Ariel has lost her voice.

 
Seeing Mermaid again today is a great experience, and it is obvious that much has happened in the world of animation since 1989. Animation now almost singularly means computer animation, and big releases run like near adult comedies on kiddie speed or acid (it sometime seems), and are sold with famous comedians like Steve Carell, Jack Black or Will Ferrell as poster candy. This way more people decide to join the little ones to the multiplexes, and the studios make more dollars. (And potentially lose more, as we also see regularly as with Turbo (2013) or Rise of the Guardians (2012) recently.)
Back to the Mermaid, - which has no star voice actors at all, but doesn't fare any the worse for that reason.
It's a beautifully animated movie with strong, charming characters: Ariel's cautious friend, Flounder, the New York-accented, funny seagull and Triton's right hand crab, Haitian-accented Sebastian. There's scenes of raucous slapstick, as when Sebastian survives a ridiculous, French chef, and many really amazing songs, - an element that sadly seems largely extinct in today's animation output. Mermaid deservedly won Oscars for Best Original Song (Under the Sea by Alan Menken (Sausage Party (2016)) and Howard Ashman (Aladdin (1992))) and Best Original Score by Menken. (It was also nominated for the song, Kiss the Girl.)
Ariel's eyes sometimes grow to hysterical excess, (bigger than the shells that make up her bra), in outrageous romantic feeling, and caused by prince Eric, who actually seems like something of a dullard throughout the film. It is an intensely romantic fairy tale, - about half of the film is about her getting him to kiss her, - and, understandably, Andersen's original, tragic ending has been thrown into the sea in favor of something lighter and happier.
The film is written and directed by Ron Clements and John Musker (Hercules (1997), both), with Ashman, Gerrit Graham (Oliver & Company (1988)), Sam Graham  and Chris Hubbell (Peter Pan and the Pirates (1990-91), both) contributing dialog, based on the Andersen story.
An online list of scary movie villains from non-horror movies recently included Ursula from The Little Mermaid and that with good reason. - The sea witch of Mermaid is a damn scary creation. A devilish, tentacled, super-obese diva, somehow reeking of sins of every nature, who keeps the souls of her unlucky clients as slimy, weeping snails in her gloomy, violet-colored, underwater lair. I don't remember villains in any recent animation films coming even close to Ursula in malice and scare-factor. Her evil culminates in a nightmare-inducing sequence, where she grows to enormous kaiju monster size in the sea. (Perhaps Western animators today are less induced to go all in with evil villains in their films than was the case in 1989. If so, that's a damn shame.)
Curiously, Ursula was inspired by the drag queen/disco singer/performance artist/actor/actress phenomenon, the now many years dead and gone Divine, most famous for her parts in John Waters films like Roman Candles (1966), Mondo Trasho (1969) and Pink Flamingos (1972). These films couldn't be further replaced from Disney's target group and are definitely not for children. (In the latter film, Divine notoriously devours real dog feces.)
Here's pictures of both movie personas for your own comparison:

Sea witch Ursula from The Little Mermaid

Drag queen legend Divine from something decidedly non-Disney

Cost: 40 mil. $
Box office: 211.3 mil. $
= Big hit (returned 5.28 times its cost)

[The Little Mermaid premiered 13 November (New York) and runs 83 minutes. The Andersen story had been planned as a Disney feature ever since the 1930s but had been scrapped for unknown reasons. Production took place in California. It was Disney's biggest budget in decades and the first time they would include Broadway-type songs in the film. The film opened #3, behind fellow new release Harlem Nights and holdover hit Look Who's Talking, to a 6 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it spent another 5 weekends in the top 5 grossing 84.3 mil. $ (39.9 % of the total gross). A 1997 re-release garnered impressive 27.1 mil. $ additionally in North America. Disney broke with their strategy to keep releases from the home video market for years to profit from re-releases by releasing Mermaid to home video after 6 months, garnering enormous merchandise and video profits, reportedly bringing the film's total revenue past 1 bil. $. The film won 2 Oscars, for Best Score (Menken) and Song (Under the Sea by Ashman and Menken, with their Kiss the Girl also getting nominated.) It also won 2/4 Golden Globe nominations, 1/3 Grammy nominations and several other honors. Roger Ebert gave it a 4/4 star review, translating to a notch over this one. Two direct-to-video sequels were made, and a 2023 live-action remake is in post-production right now. Clements and Musker returned with Aladdin (1992). The Little Mermaid is certified fresh at 93 % with an 8.20/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

 

What do you think of The Little Mermaid?

The Big Blue/Le Grand Bleu (1988) - Besson's ambitious, overlong diving drama

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An almost hypnotically pretty, original French poster for  Luc Besson's The Big Blue

The Big Blue is a nature-themed romantic drama that was great French director Luc Besson's (Léon: The Professional/Léon (1994)) third feature film, and, despite many people's high praises for it, I find it quite awful. Perhaps they feel so because of the oceanic serenity that it cultivates or the obviously lovely dolphins that are central in the semi-authentic story, but although I am fascinated with ocean life and adore dolphins, it just isn't my cup of tea.

The story concerns two very different boys in Sicily, who become friends due to their common passion for diving. As adults, they compete in the Diving World Championship as well as for a girl.

It starts out really well with B/W-scenes from the boys' childhood. After that, we are asked to stomach an excessive amount of very smug and self-satisfied Jean Reno (The Pink Panther (2006)), and literally hours of extremely good-looking Jean-Marc Barr (Baby Blues (2008)), an at the time 28 year-old man who must have been able to sleep with just about anyone he wanted, playing a man here who doesn't know A THING about women, and seemingly hasn't ever been with one. His acting goes beyond the annoying, as he seems to flirt bizarrely with Reno in countless scenes, and doesn't so much act as differentiate the cuteness with his Bambi-eyes for most of the film, (which gets old with me after about 10 minutes, wherein I fully admit that he's adorable), - whenever he isn't crying, which he also does on more than one occasion in The Big Blue. On top of this, his character, who needs to carry the movie, is morally reprehensible; addicted to extreme diving, the man truly has a very unhealthy preference for fish over people: SPOILER To underline this, at the movie's end he chooses to dive with dolphins in the dead of night instead of taking care of his pregnant, desperate girlfriend...!
The diving scenes seem endless, and they don't come close to balancing with the cliché sex scenes that seem to have found their way into the story for commercial purposes, or in order to justify even more dolphin appearances perhaps.
The awfully overlong film is the result of a script by Besson, Robert Garland (Tootsie (1982)), Marilyn Goldin (Sweet Revenge (1976)), Jacques Mayol - who is the real life basis for the lead Mayol character, - and Marc Perrier (Subway (1985)). It feels a bit as if the 5 writers came up with a huge list of scenes and simply decided never to get rid of a single one.
Rosanna Arquette (Growing Up (2008)) and Barr have the film's main romance, and they are both extremely photogenic here. Arquette in general lights up the picture tremendously, SPOILER although her character's moving from the US to Europe based on an unconsummated fling is another hard-to-believe element in The Big Blue.
 The best thing about the film is probably its photography (by Carlo Varini (The Chorus/Les Choristes (2004))) and the often very beautiful locations. There is also a well-done floating-in-bed-effect towards the end (see a still of it below), and it seems clear that real personal feeling and heart is pumping behind the film. It causes a few laughs, which also helps it from being a complete fluke. 
Finally, though, there's the film's music... Two scores exist for the movie; the original's Éric Serra (The Lady (2011)) European version score and Bill Conti's (Rocky Balboa (2006)) US version. I saw and heard the European version with Serra's score, and I thought it absolutely the worst-sounding 1980s keyboard-dominated, languid aberration that I have ever heard accompany a movie. I find the film an overly self-indulgent, mishandled, tedious, super-sentimental splash.
The Big Blue is included in the French 'Cinéma du look' movement of its time: A more visually striking, referential French wave, which was less reliant on narrative and substance than look and style, which certainly seems true for The Big Blue. The wave was made up of the early films of Besson, Leos Carax (Boy Meets Girl (1984)) and Jean-Jacques Beineix (Diva (1981)).

Related posts:

Luc Besson: Taken 2 (2012) - Neeson's in trouble in Istanbul in dull sequel (co-writer)
Bandidas (2006) - Cruz, Hayek take the West in Besson's loose grip
District 13/Banlieue 13/B-13 (2004) - Parkour action in Paris

How long can you stare at this photo of Jean-Marc Barr's face? 1 minute? 2 minutes? If you answer 168 minutes, then you might enjoy The Big Blue

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 80 mil. FRF, equaling approximately 14.2 mil. $
Box office: 3.5 mil. $ - North America only
= Uncertainty - but likely a box office success
[The Big Blue premiered 11 May (France) and runs 168 minutes (there also exists in 132 and 118 minute versions.) Filming took place in Peru, Greece, Tennessee, the Virgin Islands and New York, Italy and France, including Paris from June 1987 - ?. The story differs widely from the real lives of Mayol and Enzo Maiorca, who are the inspirations for it. Maiorca considered the film a poor caricature and did not see it publicly in his native Italy until 2001, when Mayol had died from suicide after a bout of depression. The film was a huge hit in France, where 9.1 mil. paid admission and it played for a year; if the ticket prize was 3 $, this would amount to 27.3 mil. $. It was also successful in other European markets, where it has also been re-released several times, but unfortunately the grosses are not made public. It opened #12 to a 1.6 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where its release was considered unsuccessful. The film was nominated for 8 César Awards (France's Oscar) and won 2. Without a world gross, I can't ascertain the film's theatrical hit/flop status. Besson returned with Nikita/La Femme Nikita (1990). Barr returned in Le Brasier (1991); Reno in La Femme Nikita, and Arquette in a TV movie, a video short and an anthology before she returned to the big screen in Black Rain (1989). The Big Blue is fresh at 62 % with a 5.51/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of The Big Blue?