Moby Dick

A lavish, exciting, well-acted and admirably thorough movie adaptation of Herman Melville's 1851 classic.

The glory of this particular adaptation, intentional or not, is that what we bring to it with today's sensibilities can actually enhance the experience.

Dopey? Yes. But the action scenes are terrifically exciting and very well done, and Hawke does his damndest to survive the overacting of Hurt and the underacting of Cox, who is so wooden he should be the one hobbling around on that wooden stump.

For all its flights of fancy the Encore mini-series is not entirely silly or even half bad. Shot mostly in Nova Scotia, it's an ambitious, beautifully made adventure tale that seeks to be respectful of the book while still making the characters and story accessible to modern viewers.

The action will hold your attention, though Moby Dick is really more a drama of character and flaws and faith. At times, in fact, it lapses into melodrama.

Call me bored. Encore's adaptation of Herman Melville's Moby Dick, the cable network's first original miniseries, is about as thrilling as a three-hour tour of Boston Harbor while blindfolded on a sweltering summer day.

The film aims for a dry authenticity that only fractionally reflects the big, wild volume on which it's based, cutting away nearly all of its poetry and most of its madness.