Starring: Ben Barnes, Jeff Bridges, Julianne Moore, Alicia Vikander, Kit Harrington, Djimon Hounsou, Jason Scott Lee, and Olivia Williams.

Directed By: Sergei Borgov

Where I Watched it: Netflix

English Audio Description Available?: Yes

Description Provided By: Media Access Group

Narrated By: Claudia Dunn

The Plot: I have no idea. There’s a monster hunter (Bridges) who loses his apprentice, so he buys a slave (Barnes) and makes him his new apprentice. There’s a witch (Moore) who is obviously bad, and another who might be (Vickander). Special effects ensue.

What Works: Nothing. Quite literally, almost nothing about this film works. I’d love to know from anyone who read the book this is based on if this is faithful or not, because i was having a hard time following the plot in general. I’m sure the film looks cool for those that can see, but for a blind audience, the only thing worthwhile here is the cast, and even Jeff Bridges mumbles all his dialogue. It’s possibly the worst performance of his career.

What Doesn’t Work: I was paying attention, though admittedly this movie was so incoherent and stupid, i was fighting falling asleep during the film. I might have missed 5 minutes near the beginning of the third act, but I already had far over an hour into it, and I still couldn’t follow what the film was trying to say, or what the purpose is. This film does very little exposition and world building, and assumes you’re as familiar with this source material that it’s like a King Arthur or Peter Pan. It’s not.

It does feel incredibly generic, so maybe that is what they were going for. I really did go into this with an open mind. I know this film was not welcomed well by audiences or critics, but I sometimes love shitty films. This is just a shit film that I didn’t enjoy.

The Blind Perspective: One thing, there was this monster that came out of the ground, and is referred to as quite large. Just putting an adjective of large for one of these behemoths isn’t enough. I call it “size relativity”, meaning that you have to find something to compare him to. Some would consider the hulk to be huge, but then there’s also King Kong, or how about Ego from Guardians of the Galaxy. If you can compare something that has no real world basis, like one of these fantasy creatures, to something that does, like by saying the creature is 10 times the size as whichever character, or something like, twice as tall as the canopy of the forest. Ten stories tall. Those are things we can picture. Otherwise, big can either be just a little bigger, or a hell of a lot bigger, and we won’t know the difference.

Final Thoughts: I struggled with the grade on this one. I think the movie is quite awful, and I can’t think of a memorable reason to save it except that I’m certain I’ve seen worse this year, and definitely a lot of films somehow worse than this in my lifetime. Honestly, watching Marmaduke put so much in perspective.

Final Grade: D