Whale Rider (2003)

Crappy film

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

Whale Rider had a slow start at first, but I really enjoyed the story and became invested in the main character, Pai. Though the movie did have whales as a cultural aspect of the film, I thought the movie was going to be mainly about whales. I was presently surprised to see it was about a little girl, Pai, who wants to be the next tribe leader. However Koro, her grandfather and current leader, believes that it is only a man's position to lead the tribe. In my eyes, Koro's value in tradition was grater than the his relationship with Pai. That made me sad. She was desperately trying to get her grandfather to notice her and at least take her into consideration as the next leader. On another note, while I was watching Whale Rider, I could not help but compare this movie and Disney's Moana because they both have Māori influence. Watching this movie helped me understand some of the costumes in Moana and Moana helped me better understand the ending of the movie. To be honest if I had not seen Moana, I would have been really confused during the last clip.

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.

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.

"We were waiting for the firstborn of the new generation, for the descendant of the whale rider. For the boy who would be chief."This New Zealand coming of age film about a young girl from the Whangara tribe struggling to find her place in this traditionally patriarch society, opens with tragedy. A woman dies giving birth to twins, and only the sister survives. She is the one narrating this event while introducing us to her tribe's culture and saying what a huge disappointment this was for her grandfather who was expecting the first born son to become the tribe chief. Her father, Porourangi (Cliff Curtis), is heartbroken and against her grandfather's wishes he doesn't assume the responsibility of becoming a leader, deciding to travel abroad instead as an artist. He leaves the girl, Paikea (Keisha Castle-Hughes), in the care of his parents, Koro (Rawiri Paratene) and Nanny (Vicky Haughton). From a very early age, Paikea feels she is destined to become the leader of her tribe, but despite Koro's love for her he refuses to let her participate in the training and search for the new leader. Of course a film about female empowerment like this was directed by a woman, Niki Caro, who also adapted the screenplay from Witi Ihimaera's novel. The story almost has a fairytale quality to it, but it does have a lot to say about sexism and keeping up with past customs in a modern world.At the time of its release, Whale Rider, was received with a lot of praise from audiences at the Sundance and Toronto film festivals and it also received an Academy Award nomination for Keisha Castle-Hughes' lead performance who at the time was the youngest actress to be nominated in that category. Keisha was given strong material to work with and she is by far the best thing about the movie. Her performance is breathtaking as Paikea as she captures the struggle to find her place in this society that she feels destined to lead. Her relationship with her grandfather is the center of the movie and it was one I had a difficult time believing considering he ignores her for almost the entire film despite her love and belief in him. There is a powerful scene near the end of the film in which she honors him at her school but it didn't move me as much considering I didn't share that same sympathy for Koro. It is however a wonderful scene thanks to Keisha's touching speech and I'm assuming it was the reason why she was nominated. My greatest complaint is with the pacing of the first half of the film that never managed to engage me. The family dynamics weren't compelling and it took a while to understand why Paikea would want to stay in such an unwelcoming place out of a sense of duty in fulfilling her destiny. I did enjoy the final 20 minutes which were touching and inspirational, but it wasn't enough to save the first 70 minutes and its slow pacing. The only other interesting character in the film is Paikea's uncle who is given little screen time, but his relationship with her seemed like something much more interesting and worth exploring more. I didn't enjoy Whale Rider as much as I had hoped, and I found it to be quite a missed opportunity for such an interesting story.http://estebueno10.blogspot.com/