a review.

Serenity, as reviewed by a non fan(atic).

two weeks ago, a friend called me up and asked if we'd like to go see Serenity with him, as he had no other friends even willing to consider the movie, so otherwise he'd have to go by himself. we said sure.

a little research basically gave me the impression that someone had finally taken gene roddenberry's "wagon train to the stars" idea seriously, as well as bringing to my attention the fact that the reason i had never seen Firefly (the tv series on which the movie was based, for those of you who aren't interested in sci fi either) was because it just happened to air the fall of my wedding. i was having enough trouble trying to delegate wedding organization (so i had to do as little as possible ;) and i can't manage to watch a tv show under normal circumstances, much less those.

so we went to see the movie. and it was good. it was good sci fi, and it contained things sci fi rarely contains nowadays, which is to say a) decent acting, b) the ability to laugh at itself, c) nicely complex characters, and d) a good low-budget grittiness (similar to the first star wars, not to be confused with low-budget cheesiness).

it also had problems. the first being a discordant dialogue. this movie demonstrates the pitfalls of trying to write in dialect. it works if the dialect is kept consistent and does not become distracting. when the actors are demonstrably tripping over the folksy phrases and deliberately ungrammatical delivery, it's a sign you've gone a bit too far. also, maybe mr.whedon will get a larger budget next time so he'll be able to hire a dialect coach and keep his main character's accent from careening wildly between cowboy and irish peasant.

the writing did, however, do a phenomenal job of giving the characters' backstory without having to resort to an exposition dump, for those of us who were taken by our friends and had not gone to see the movie of our own idea. the characters themselves are also really well-developed in the time he had (see earlier point). although while the plot looked cool and glossy up front, it, quite frankly, left some holes you could drive a truck through, as well as breaking continuity with the show (if what my friend told me is true). no spoilers here; if you want to debate, feel free to email me ;)

all in all, it was, in fact, a good movie. good action, complex and sympathetic characters, a sense of humour, edge-of-your-seat tension. better than average :)