Reviews

During about the first half of "Whose Child Am I", I tought how sensitive and balanced this movie is. It could have been as sterile, scientific and boring as a school education movie or as bad as a german "Schulmädchen Report": "Insemination Report! How children are really made!".

In the second half, it just did that.

Whereas in the first half it takes its time to lay out the moral dilemmas of parents-to-be, it takes just too many shortcuts, hastily deals with rather minor issues and adds some bizarre plot twists out of the blue. The performance of the actress portraying the Hippie woman was quite bad. And in the final scenes, I kept asking myself: "Why just didn't they ... ((do it the easy way))?".

So, is it worth it? Well. If you are into (more than) topless women, watch a "Schulmädchen Report". If not, you won't miss much here.

I've never heard of this topic before and was really looking forward to learn about what happened back then in Norway. After about half an hour into the first episode, my disappointment grew.

on one hand, this series is hopelessly overpolished. there's everything that can be achieved by best technology and the best actors available. every single shot, each haircut, every costume, every technological detail is perfect.

on the other side, it is breathtakingly shallow. there's every stereotype, every cliché that's in the book. dialogues without depth, more of the obvious.

and, worst of all - soundtrack and camera. the soundtrack hits you like a wall of concrete. I was grateful for the foreign language scene, for they are subtitled and I could mute the sound.

I really don't understand why, centuries after the invention of the tripod, camera operators shake the camera on purpose. just to be different? I wish they'd be different from all the stereotypes and cliches mentioned before.

I couldn't stand it anymore at then end of episode two. I'd better look for the BBC documentary.

The acting is amateurish at best, the dialogues shallow and barely interesting, the scenes way too long, the "expirement" redicilous. the shaky camera in combination with subtitles makes it even more unbareable. I didn't even care about the "torture" scene, I just wanted it to be over out of boredom.

I skipped through many scenes, maybe that's why I missed the point. But I doubt there was any.

This amateurish botch winning a major prize is presumably some sign of desparation.

Immediately after watching this movie, I tended to give it a low rating, since I agreed with mostly all reviewers who gave a 3 rating. mostly because it was boring, had plot holes and implausibilities, the incompetence of the police and because of the keller character and his violence just "because he knows".

but then, it dawned on me.

although the father was obviously supposed to be the good guy because (as seen by many of the 8 to 10 raters) "he does what he has to do" to get his daughter back, he finally gets what he deserves for what he does to the alex guy.

the first minutes into the film, I was pleased that all the characters got on with their business in a calm, unagitated way - as opposed to so many detective stories where there's so much exaggerated language, overacting and discord between the main characters.

but, oh boy, villeneuve overdid it in this regard - it added so much more boredom.

A crime scene, detective work. cut. an elderly couple. cut. black kid playing football. cut. detective work. cut. a priest. cut. a wealthy elderly man. cut. detective work. cut. black kid again. cut. elderly couple. cut. detective work. cut ... Five story lines in 45 minutes gives about 9 minutes per story line. those 9 minutes are again cut down to intertwined fragments of (estimated) 60 to 90 seconds.

As soon as I got accustomed to a story line - cut! I quit the first episode after 20 minutes.

sorry, I'm too old for this. I'm of the early MTV generation, but even back then clips lasted for at least three minutes.

At the beginning, I was a fan of GoT like so many others. somewhere around S5 I just got bored, from there on (for me) it was stagnation at a very high level. But still, producers & writers managed to avoid the usual clichees we have seen a thousand times before.

I didn't expect much from this season, and I'm really stunned that even the low expectations weren't met.

first of all, the soundtrack is a real pain in the a..., ehm, ear. It just ran over the story and visuals like a bulldozer. And it sounded the same as the countless cheap orchestral scores in hollywood mass products seen so many times before.

It's like pouring a 10kg bag of sugar over the best slice of chocolate cake you've ever had. "Hey! stupid couch potato! it's sweet!!" (yeah, I can see).

second. darkness. sure, it's the longest night. and nights are dark. but THAT dark?! it's just black in black, even in scenes where there could have been more light. that's fine when it's necessary, but for three episodes?!

third. the producers fell in every clichee trap they avoided so far. main characters? never die (they did in the beginning, though). contemplation before the storm. testosterone driven cockfights - even the women. salvation in the last 10th of the second. and so on.

fourth. plot holes. the bran character, for example. he sat in his wheelchair for seven seasons and basically did nothing. suddenly, he's the condensation point, but we don't know why. what was his business with the night king? where did he get the scratches from? and so on.

although I just watched E03, I read newspaper articles on how it all ends. and I think I'll leave it to that.

to answer the question in the headline: I just don't care anymore.

Imagine climbing el capitan. solo, without ropes, without breaks. what do you hear? NOTHING. who do you see? NOBODY.

the last thing one hears up there - and the audience expects - is a full blown, extremely annoying orchestral score. and knowing that he has been surrounded in the whole wall by so many other persons, cameras and drones just doesn't feel right.

riding on my bicycle alone for hundreds of kilometers, preferably at night, without anybody else around and no sound at all, I think I understand the loner inside him pretty well. being so social throughout the movie, especially the girlfriend part, also just doesn't feel right.

this movie could have been so much better with utmost silence (at least) during the final climb. and also without 40 minutes of empty miles.