Voyage of the Damned

At times a bit plodding, Voyage of the Damned certainly succeeds in making its point, as did the conniving Hitler: It's harder to condemn the perpetrators of racism when you turn away their victims at your door. [17 Sep 2005, p.12]

There is obviously a good deal of built in human interest in this material. But this movie squanders its most important resource - its people - by employing an all-star cast so huge and unwieldy that nobody is on hand long enough to exert much of an emotional tug. [27 Dec 1976, p.57]

The huge cast seems to share in the sense of confusion, and what might have been an excellent treatment of an important story merely falls flat.

Fact that the story is based on an actual, and shocking, incident makes all the more disappointing its transfer to the screen. The action zigs and zags between the cluttered set of characters.

Rosenberg here confuses seriousness with tedious solemnity, and with the star glut has produced a compacted TV series.

As the lines drone on -- paced with a sledgehammer -- you may feel you could die for a little overlapping dialogue. But with this material you can't even have the frivolous pleasure of derision.

Movies as clumsy, tasteless and self-righteous as this are worse than merely boring. By exploiting the tragedies of real people, some wildly fictionalized, The Voyage of the Damned attempts to turn them to profit without giving them any measure of the respect that is due.