Come sail away kiddies on a three hour tour into the belly of two hurricanes colliding with ladies man George Clooney as yer skipper. Mark Wahlberg plays a… well I don’t know, but I know he has Diane Lane waiting for him at home and I do know she needs to be in more movies. Plus an assorted group of people all needing money and risking their lives for the catch of their lives in director Wolfgang Petterson’s newest saga. But basically, and I’ll keep the water puns to a minimum, the film is all wet.

The Perfect Storm manages to soak you with waves of cliches. It wants you to care for these characters, hell it spends half the movie setting up their lives, but never cements them as people but only selfish caricatures. The exposition of the fishing community is a tiresome run of every small town cliche where everybody knows everybody, to the larger woman everyone associates as “mom,” to the old grizzled sea dog permanently fixed to his bar stool. Basically, be glad when the boys go off to sea and leave this place.

How come everyone in the film has a New Englanda’ accent except for Clooney? It’s that type of movie. The acting can’t save this picture especially when the only performance of notice is the reliable John C. Reilly. His is the only character who doesn’t come off as a selfish braggart or just an idiot.

What should be the film’s high-point with the mono-a-mono wrestle with Mother Nature eventually collapses on itself. How many times can you see Clooney get splashed in the face before familiarity and boredom set in? Trust me, it’s not many. The Perfect Storm‘s effects are dutifully impressive as water is a very tricky mistress, but couldn’t there have been a story behind it?

Just when you’re not trying to tune out the guitar jackhammer score or not to dwell on Clooney’s cringe-worthy “swordfish captain” speech you see flashes of what The Perfect Storm had going but never surfaced. Instead we get water-logged plots, water-logged stars, and plenty of syrupy sentiment. It’ll be this year’s Armageddon for the under 16 girls.

Nate’s Grade: C