Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 75% (Critics) / 48% (Audience)
Directed By: Darren Aronofsky
Written By: Darren Aronofsky and Ari Handel
Starring: Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Emma Watson, Ray Winstone and Anthony Hopkins
Studio: Paramount Pictures

Synopsis: A man is chosen by God to undertake a momentous mission of rescue before an apocalyptic flood destroys the world. – (Source)

The Good:
Russell Crowe was great in every facet of his performance from playing the nature loving servant of God to when he seemed to be auditioning for another remake of THE AMITYVILLE HORROR. Also Darren Aronofsky’s decisions on so many of the visuals were so spot on and unpredictable.
I also enjoyed this movie more when it was being a fantasy adventure quest with wizards, magic seeds and battling rock monsters than when it become a not-so-subtle film about an abusive ecoterrorist.
And Ray Winstone was pretty damn awesome as the degenerate King Tubal-Cain.

The Bad:
The fact that Aronofsky eschews any mention of “God” seems like a cop-out decision that was made to appease everyone. The use of “The Creator” and the nods to evolution and dinosaurs didn’t bother me in a spiritual sense but did bother me in the sense that when you are making a biblical story you should make a biblical story. NOAH was basically a fantasy adventure/family drama that wanted to make too many people happy and seemed to fail at that task.
The film was also a bit too long and began to become a major drag once they got on The Ark.

The Ugly
I am always up for walking and talking rock monsters but as representations of fallen angels (which I don’t think they were ever officially called btw) they seemed pretty lame.

Final Verdict: A decidedly non-denominational retelling of the Judeo-Christian tale that plays more like an environmentalist fantasy adventure than a biblical tale before taking a right turn into a Lifetime movie about an abusive father. Some of Aronofsky’s singular style bleeds through and Russell Crow is more interesting in this film than he has been in probably a decade but overall this movie is so schizophrenic that it is impossible to be as terrible as it really deserves to be.

Grade: C+