thmurphy-37414
To start this all off, I would have to give Whale Rider a 8 out of 10 stars. The movie was a little hard to follow in the sense of not knowing much about Pai's family's culture, but that wasn't a very big problem. The story starts off with Pai's father in the hospital with Pai's mother, who is in childbirth. Pai's unborn brother dies with her mother, causing Pai's father to leave and go travel the world taking pictures. To me it was very surprising that a father would just leave his only daughter, especially after what occurred. Yet, I guess that is how he was to cope with the dramatic loss. I won't get too in depth about the rest of the story, but Pia's grandfather is looking for a new leader, and right from the start there are gender rolls that take place. Pia is not allowed to go for the position as the leader of the people, as she is only a girl. There is a constant love-hate relationship between Pia and Grandfather, yet it all ends towards the end. I won't spoil the ending, but it is very easy to get lost when it comes to why everything is happening. Besides that, Whale Rider is a very excellent movie, and I would recommend it to anyone. Before you watch it though, make sure to do some research on the movie and the people who are in it.
Pablo
This to me was a very interesting movie to watch. It was pretty hard for me to understand at first, but I understood it more and more along the way as far as the plot line goes. It was also very different than most, if not all, of the movies we've watched throughout the year in this class. It is a story about a grandfather who wants to pass on his leadership to his grandson. The problem is, he doesn't have one. His son only has one daughter. A girl named Pai. He makes several efforts to find a capable young village boy to take his place. All of the boys fail, angering him and causing him to severely discourage his granddaughter Pai. Pai shows on many occasions how she is far better suited for the position of leader. In the end, she finally proves herself by releasing a pod of beached whales back into the ocean. Her grandfather later feels very bad for treating her the way he did and all is well. This was a very interesting story line in my eyes. It was pretty sad at some points, but also very happy at other times. In general, I like the main character Pai. She is very strong, intelligent, and outgoing. She also never gives up as she repeatedly attempts to show and prove her skills to her grandfather. My main gripes about the film were the acting and the grandfather. the acting for the most part was very bad in my eyes. I think the main problem was that a majority of the actors were children. I also severely disliked the grandfather. He was generally a mean, sour, and cold hearted person. Instead of supporting and standing up for his granddaughter, he put her down, ignored her, and attempted to discourage her from gaining the position of leader.
logatherum
I have very mixed emotions about this film. I enjoyed watching it because there were not very many slow scenes. However, it did seem a bit forced in terms of the acting. I did not really particularly like any of the character's roles, because they just seemed to be trying to hard to act in my opinion. If I had to choose a favorite character though, it would be the little girl because she was so under appreciated, it was almost (literally) unbelievable, and unrealistic. Her grandfather was so mean to her, but to me, it was a bit unclear as to why exactly, and why he did not somehow grow to love her. I was also confused about who her father was. In the beginning, I understand that her mother died during childbirth along with her twin brother, and that the man with the long hair at the hospital was her father. However, when the movie fast forwarded after a few minutes about ten years later, I was completely lost as to which man (there were two that looked the same to me) was her father and which was her uncle! As the movie progressed, I grew tired of the grandfather's lousy, mean behavior towards his granddaughter, and his moping. I don't understand how he became so upset when he saw the whale on the beach, yet seemed to have a cold heart of stone when it came to people around him who loved him very much! I really wish that the grandmother would have divorced him during the film, like she kept telling the little girl she would. I think that there should have been more character development for the grandfather's role, because that could have made it more intriguing, and given the audience some insight into his mind. I also wish that the little girl would have had a best friend, or someone she could have stuck with throughout the film, because everyone seemed to be so against her that I wanted to just jump in and hug her! Overall, this film is interesting because of the Maori culture aspect, but I would not recommend it, or watch it again. My favorite thing about this film to be completely honest was their accents.
Cameron Crawford
I did not like this film very much. This movie seemed to force a gender issue, where there was not a real need for one. I liked the concept of the whale rider, and how the Grandfather would raise the youth of the area into a whale rider. I thought the grandfather not allowing his daughter to train and practically banishing her was excessive. The grandfather was quick tempered and only wanted a grandson, so the entire movie was based around the grandfather's disliking of his daughter. In my opinion, this movie was too focused on the subject of the daughter not being the person that her grandfather wanted her to be, rather than it focusing on what she wanted. Some people could view this movie as a break from social and gender norms, but I saw it as a girl that couldn't do anything to break her gender norms until she risked her life to save the whales. Overall, this movie was not very enjoyable for me, mainly because of the dull plot and sub-par acting.
AD
