When making a movie, a certain amount of artistic license should be allowed for. Even if the original script for the movie was written down a few thousand years ago, it's okay to make a few changes to keep things interesting. I mean, I was okay with the Romeo + Juliet movie that referred to pistols as swords, so I get that reimaginings are okay. This one got generally good reviews, which is why I'm struggling to write this review that will most certainly be negative.
The entire world is divided into two camps. The first camp is the evil people who descend from Cain, the world's first murderer. When Cain was cast out, he was given fallen angels known as "Watchers" to guard him for no definitively explained reason. It is unclear why he was given these angels, what they did to fall, and why only the killer was given protection.
The second camp are those who descended from Seth - of which Noah was the last. Well, I say he was the last because the movie said so. The fact is, he had children, so there's that. It is important and terrible that the reason you will be killed in this story is because you are genetically inferior to the true master race that descended from Seth. The women being beaten and raped in the streets of the Cain world? Well, we're all guilty of something, aren't we? So, I guess they deserve it. Oh, these people are also meat eaters... which is bad. Noah's kids don't even know what meat tastes like. This is especially odd, as the reason Cain killed Abel was that a persnickety god didn't like the sacrifice of grain/fruit that Cain offered, while God did very much enjoy the meat offering that Abel gave him. But, meat is now bad...which I don't get.
There is a third camp, and those are the Watchers. They appear to do all of the hard work with building the ark. Then, when the damned humans come running to save themselves from a wet death, the Watchers (who never really live up to the name) lay into them with reckless abandon. It is this wholesale and indiscriminate slaughter of men and women alike that God smiles upon and accepts the Watchers back into heaven when they inevitably fall.
Everyone in the movie seems to do a pretty good job this side of Emma Watson who really just... doesn't. In fact, I heard so much about Russell Crowe's great job that I almost accepted it as fact that he did a great job, but it just seemed pretty good most of the time. Let's just say that surprise is not an emotion that Russell is particularly good at faking.
Noah is a grumpy son of a gun whose plan is to ensure the death of all people in the world (including his own and his children's). He does not build the Ark - as I said, the fallen angels called Watchers do. He does not gather animals - they come to him of their own free will and require no real interaction. He doesn't tend to the animals - they all sleep for the entire time they are on board. I can't even tell why we're supposed to root for this guy.
At the end, I was waiting for him to start complaining about having to go down a list and drop animals off at the right locations. Madagascar or the Galapagos would have been his last stop, and he would have just been all, "Screw it. Anyone who doesn't have a home, you wind up here."
Acting was good enough
Effects were good
Cinematography was excellent
CG was okay
Story was weak
Dialog was so stale it was old testament
1.25/5
I seriously have no idea why people gave this good reviews.