The Abyss

1989 underwater sci-fi adventure

Rating: 13/20

Plot: Underwater aliens.

Yes! More hatch-to-hatch action! I give that a sphincter factor of 9.5!

As a fan of David Letterman, I have a special place in my heart for big, goofy Chris Elliott. Still, I'm not sure people put him in movies like this. Maybe he's not as distracting for people who aren't unapologetically fans of Cabin Boy, but whenever I see him as a boat guy in a movie like this or a robber in New York Stories from the same year, I'm distracted by his big, goofy presence.

This movie was way too long to hold my interest. I didn't really enjoy the characters or the romantic subplot between the always-boring Ed Harris playing the appropriately boringly-named Bud Brigman (Is that a pun? I think that's a pun.) and the equally-boring Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. Speaking of her, James Cameron seems like he might have been angry at women when writing this. There are probably too many opportunities in this for characters to refer to her as a "bitch" or something. The bad guys are over-the-top thuggish SEALS, and the auxiliary ocean explorers wearing their cowboy hats or playing around with their pet mice are eccentric for really no good reason. I don't like the dialogue in this, mostly because the characters are way too clever in situations where they should probably be shitting themselves. They rarely respond like actual human beings at any point in this. I mean, we're talking about underwater aliens here, so you'd think the characters would seem like it's not something they've seen before.

The effects themselves are things we've all seen before, but in 1989, these special effects were pretty revolutionary. Cameron always does that sort of thing well, and I loved how the underwater scenes look. Cameron seems to know just where subtle hints of light need to be to shift moods and enhance the thrills. The alien stuff is simultaneously cool, silly, and improbable, but it always looks pretty good, even the scene where the water alien worms around the submarine so that it can exchange funny faces with the boring characters.

Storytelling is Cameron's weakness. He's trying to balance hurricanes, Russians, aliens, and pressure-induced psychosis, and it's not always cohesive. I also really really hated the Alan Silvestri score. I'll have to look through his oeuvre actually because I might hate all of his scores. 

Captain Crunch product placement, probably because that's the only cereal that would make sense.