The New World (2005)

The New World (2005). As you can see, this movie is from five years ago. I had it on my queue and decided to check it out at my local brick and mortar BB because I had a coupon for a free non-new release DVD. Free is always good when it comes to DVD rentals.

So, anyway, this movie is supposed to be based on the story of John Smith and Pocahontas. There is a character of John Smith and one of Pocahontas. She protects him from being killed by her people. They become close and fall in love with each other. That's about the extent to which this movie is similar to the animated movie, Pocahontas.

The wife and I watched it together. After the movie was over, we both thought, "That was interesting."

First let me say that this is a long movie. I think it was 2 hours and 20 minutes but not totally sure. Although 2 1/2 hours may not seem all that long compared to Lord of the Rings or something similar, the movie seem way longer because there was very little actual dialogue. There was a lot of speaking but not directly from the actors on screen. It was sort of like a narration or oration over a scene that was taking place. The wife and I joked that there was probably three pages of actual person-to-person speaking on screen. This is part of the reason the movie seemed to drag on for me.

The scenery was absolutely gorgeous. I don't know where it was shot but the country and water scenes were just Kodak-moment type shots. The acting wasn't phenomenal but it wasn't disappointing.

I did see one correlation between this movie and the animated movie when I just recently looked them up on IMDB. Christian Bale is in both of them. He voiced Thomas (the kid that basically started the fighting with an itchy trigger finger) in Pocahontas and he played John Rolfe (who falls in love with John Smith's [Colin Farrell] sloppy seconds) in The New World.

If you have a rainy, boring day that you just need something to do, you can watch this movie. We actually watched it over almost a day because of some parental/adult responsibilities or just because it was time to take a break and feel rejuvenated by stepping outside for a bit.