Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Mystery of the Nile (2005) IMAX 2D

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Posted by Brian Michael Weidemann (Member # 2243) on 05-13-2005, 05:08 AM:

Even though this opened a few months back, I ran a pair of "premiere" screenings for MacGillivray tonight, complete with live introductions by Mr. MacG, a raffle, and a Q&A with the movie's safety-kayaker.

This was a really good movie, and it was good the first time I saw it ... when it was called Everest.

I don't mean to belittle the extraordinary feat it was to run an expedition down the Nile, all the way from source to sea. The expedition depicted in the movie was supposedly the first ever to do it all the way without giving up or dying along the way. But the way the story and footage was wrapped up into a tidy package seemed like a desperate attempt to recreate the success that MacGillivray-Freeman had with Everest. The only things missing were narration by Liam Neeson, and, oh, a real tragedy.

Like Everest, this film's expedition crew included a very attractive Spanish woman with a thick accent, for one thing, who seemed to add nothing more than her presence to the story. And the local guy they brought along had a spiritual/family-type goal to fulfill.

The music had a very Everest touch to it (but not quite so much as Journey Into Amazing Caves did, as I recall) And even the title logo used what looked like the exact same typeface! Calligraph?

Everest aside, this was pretty decent. Lots of gorgeous shots of things: water, brown water, rocks, foliage, brown water, natives, pyramids, brown water, camels, temples, ... brown water. But then, what IMAX movie (especially a Mac-Freeman movie) doesn't have just crisp, colorful, pretty images in every shot? It's always worth seeing these at least once, if nothing else than just to let stuff shot in 65mm soak in.

As these movies go, this one was good and solid. It should do well, but not for us, since we're not booking it, as we seem not to do these movies anymore ... not unless they're big, important screenings.