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75Unabashedly designed to blow its audience away.
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63By the end, I felt like a beetle going round and round in a toilet bowl that just wouldn't stop flushing.
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80Scary and exciting.
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63The movie is "Twister" on the high seas, a spectacular-looking, spectacularly hollow tale about foolhardy men vs. imperious nature.
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63An enthralling special-effects tour de force with a lover's nook.
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63So much water. Such a dramatic washout.
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50Not terrible, but distinctly disappointing, not nearly as engaging or thrilling as its premise seems to promise.
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50The Perfect Storm is no "Titanic."
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50But jaw-dropping trailer aside, there isn't much movie here.
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100This is one perfectly terrifying movie, an instant classic.
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88A well-crafted example of a film of pure sensation. I do not mind admitting I was enthralled.
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88'Titanic'' was a case of a cheeseball story riding terrific effects. The Perfect Storm is in every important way deeper.
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88Accomplishes a delicate balancing act, that of entertaining the audience with the thrills and adventure of the Andrea Gail's final journey.
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75Dive right in if you're looking for an old-fashioned entertainment that delivers corny romance, turbulent action, and enough wave-churning seascapes to make "Titanic" seem landlocked.
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75Petersen's speculative reenactment makes for gripping summer entertainment -- if you don't mind a little corn floating in your brine.
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75The problem with The Perfect Storm is that while its roiling collision of weather systems is pulled off with cinematic deftness, the actors who stand there getting lashed and splashed don't have anything terribly interesting to say.
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75Does about as good a job of simulating that terror as it possibly could, but it's no competition for what we create in our mind's eye while reading.
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60Overall, the book is a far more rewarding experience than the movie.
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89Nearly a perfect film, from its bold and epic man-vs.-nature conflict to the breathless scripting, editing, acting, and direction.
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67The stick-figure people in the script haven't the slightest chance of making an impression, and you're more excited at the prospect of the next big wave?
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58Petersen gives us monumental images of waves and rain and wind, but the editing is so choppy that the images don't build and crest.
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80As a movie, this is exciting stuff.
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70Has noticeable problems with characterization and dialogue. But once that awesome storm, one of the most terrifying ever put on film, gets cranked up, it's hard to remember what those difficulties were, let alone care too much about them.
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70Impersonal Hollywood filmmaking at its most paradoxical. It keeps you glued to your seat, and leaves no aftertaste whatsoever.
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60The storm is the reason to see the movie.
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50Rains on its own parade.
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50Big effects; threadbare story.
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50Once at sea, The Perfect Storm collapses in a heap of spectacle and a dubious piling-on of scary incidents.
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50What's true about The Perfect Storm is true of many effects epics: it's not a bad movie, except for the people.
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50The yarn's emotional undercurrents never take hold, resulting in a picture that leaves one thinking less about the fates of the characters than about how the actors had to spend most of their working days soaking wet.
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40Its spectacular special effects threaten to swallow characters whole, and there are times when overwrought and clumsy dialogue... nearly pitch you right out of the movie's mood.
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40The whole thing is kitsch of the most pricey sort, and it's a good guess that it will be a smash.
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40It may have been the perfect storm, but this is the imperfect movie.
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30It's like a memorial service with killer special effects.
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65The perfect example, of how the newest visual effects movies have the capacity to overwhelm everything--from actors to plotlines--except in the end, maybe, their audiences.
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40It's shocking, considering the talent involved, the The Perfect Storm looks and feels fake.