Beystiman It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Matrixiole Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Ogosmith Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Samiam3 If you felt that John Huston's film of Herman Melville's immortal epic was too old hat for you, I think you'll find what you are looking for in here. stunning photography, stronger acting, and dazzling special effects, Franc Roddam's Moby Dick, is not just one of the greatest TV movies but one of the greatest sea fearing pictures to come out of the last few decades.Moby Dick is one of those novels that everyone talks about but nobody has read. Herman Melville's 19th century New England maritime dialog would be difficult for most contemporary readers, but his story is just as strong in a movie form as it is in a 1000 page book, ergo a viewer could gain the same knowledge and understanding of all the themes, whaling, shipping and most of all human nature.I've never thought of Patrick Stewart as a great actor, but this is the strongest performance I've seen him give. His Captain Ahab is more colorful than Gregory Pecks, sometimes going over the top, but he does a better job of portraying the old captain as a madman Henry Thomas and Ted Levine also give good performances, and even Gregory Peck makes an appearance. Incidentilly this what the last movie he acted in.Even though the original Moby Dick is still impressive today, the special effects are weak and they show scientific inaccuracies regarding the movement of whales. A good balance of CG and animatronic makes Moby Dick in this film, move more elegantly, like a whale rather than a rubber model. Once again the film not only emphasizes the color of the whale but the size. Moby Dick is a Sperm whale, a species which grows to a lenght of about 50 - 55 feet. however this specimen looks closer to 100 feet . There are some great shots which provide a good hint of scale, one of which involves a whaling rowboat being crushed between the giants jawsIf you can find this on DVD or catch it on television, I strongly recommend you see this, it might just blow you out of the water with awe.

mlraymond This television film is a mix of good intentions and missed opportunities, that results in an acceptable but not brilliant version of Melville's book. Patrick Stewart is fine as Ahab, and gets to deliver some of Melville's best lines wonderfully. Ted Levine is a terrific Starbuck, with a real emotional depth to his performance that is probably the best thing in the movie. The ship looks good, the street scenes and the Spouter Inn, are all well done, and there is a grimy, grungy realism about the look of the clothing and the buildings and everything that makes up the day to day world of Nantucket.The acting generally is good and it's not at all a bad adaptation of a classic.However, it does miss most of the eerie, overwhelming sense of strangeness and mystery of the book. Moby Dick is simply not as majestic and terrifying as he should be, with the sense of awe he inspires in the superstitious seamen. Ahab's mad rage at the whale should be stronger, as well as his hypnotic hold over his crew. The biggest loss in a film that otherwise gives us more of Melville's characters and incidents than any other film adaptation, is the inexplicable omission of Fedallah's spooky prophecies to Captain Ahab. At least the character is included, and he is shown to have some sort of special relationship to Ahab, which is never fully explained in the novel, either. But the dramatic scenes near the end of the book, with Ahab listening to the fatalistic prophecies of Fedallah, concerning the outcome of the hunt for the White Whale, are excluded, and what could have been a truly inspired adaptation becomes a pretty good version, but not the great work it could have been.Overall, a good adaptation worth seeing, but the 1956 John Huston version, though not as detailed, captures more of the awesome, wild tone of the original.

KINGKONG3 SPOILERS!!!!!!I've never been sufficiently stirred to comment on a film on the IMDB before, but after watching this I was compelled to. Having recently finished reading the book for the first time (I'm 23 and British. I imagine it's a standard text at school in the US) I was impressed with the scale and sweep of the story, and eagerly hunted down the DVD to relieve my enjoyment of Moby Dick.Having just this second finished watching it, I'm stunned. This film embodies just about everything bad about made for TV films.So what went wrong? Well, the special effects aren't up to much - but it seems unfair to pillory a film for such things, the whale itself is fairly impressive...but the main problem is with the liberties taken with the story. It has been spliced up and messed about with in ways too numerous to mention here, and no-one else seems to have noticed this in the website reviews! Some examples : Moby dick appears half way through the film, where he occupies the last three chapters of the book. Ahab dies the death that Pharsee suffers in the book. Ezekiel at the beginning tells you exactly what will happen, rather than just giving vague warnings. Starbucks' role has been modified too, instead of thinking of shooting Ahab in his sleep he now nearly stabs him (why change that?) Moby Dick gets chased to the arctic....the list goes on... Patrick Stewart was obviously brought in as a name to lend the film some credibility, but is not an obvious choice for the role, and doesn't look particularly convincing, although at least he tries.If you haven't read the book, there is probably an interesting enough 3hrs for you here, if you have - save yourself the frustration and keep well away!

tangoviudo I was never a fan of John Huston's version of "Moby Dick," but it's a veritable masterpiece compared with this dreary TV movie. Everyone speaks in a booming falsetto, including poor Patrick Stewart, who needn't have. The CGI effects are supposedly an important part of the film, what with a computer-generated White Whale, among other things. But nothing meshes - a lesson to would-be CGI wannabes. And reducing Melville's novel to a mere yarn is sacrilege.