The discrepancy between the sophistication of the special effects and the rudimentary dramaturgy results in a $140 million film that may raise your blood pressure, but leaves the rest of you distinctly unengaged.

| Mar 6, 2018

Scary and sad are the main concerns here.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 28, 2010

Think of something with the heart and soul of a Conrad yarn, yet buttressed by very special effects and shrewdly packaged for devotees of the Outdoor Living Network

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 22, 2002

A sense of reality is essential, and it's sorely lacking.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | May 10, 2001

A great tragedy suffocated by tyrannical sentimentality

Full Review | Apr 17, 2001

A marvellously evocative volume of nonfiction storytelling has been reduced to the phoniest kind of computer-generated images.

Full Review | Jan 1, 2000

It's not perfect -- nor even predominately successful -- with storytelling and character development.

| Jan 1, 2000

It isn't a very good movie.

Full Review | Jan 1, 2000

The movie starts to sink long before the boat does.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 1, 2000

Humans are irrelevant to an effects extravaganza.

Full Review | Jan 1, 2000

Like so many things about this movie, that speech is intended to deepen our understanding of the character and ennoble his quest, but winds up sounding as real as the proverbial fishing story.

Full Review | Jan 1, 2000

Opens with a squall of anticipatory clichs.

Full Review | Jan 1, 2000

Soggy, cardboard-thin clichs

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jan 1, 2000

Once at sea, The Perfect Storm collapses in a heap of spectacle and a dubious piling-on of scary incidents.

Full Review | Jan 1, 2000

The audience, with good reason, is much more conflicted in the end about this voyage than the crew, and so we are put in the unfortunate position of feeling superior to these men.

Full Review | Jan 1, 2000

After a while the unending tumult simply becomes monotonous.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jan 1, 2000

Perfect Storm is thrilling but can't match the terror of the book.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 1, 2000

Much of the exposition, however, is assaultively clumsy.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 1, 2000

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.

Full Review | Jan 1, 2000

The movie's biggest problem is that it has no real story to tell, and no characters who seem capable of talking about anything but their sense of oncoming doom.

Full Review | Jan 1, 2000