THE ODYSSEY reviewed by a real life GREEK

[00:00:02]I'm a Greek American actor and filmmaker. I have read Homer's poem, The Odyssey, back in high school. I've seen countless adaptations throughout my life. I have a fancy hard coverver version on my bookshelf that I've never cracked open. I've even played the game Assassin's Creed Odyssey all the way through. I'm a fan of Christopher Nolan's movies, except for these two.

[00:00:26]from Nolan's new film, The Odyssey, was made for me. So, what did I think of it?

[00:00:31]Here's my non-spoiler review.

[00:00:34][music] So, besides being a handsome Greek, I'm also a bitter middle-aged man who spends most of his time on X and YouTube. So, all the controversies surrounding this film were not unknown to me and were a concern for me, especially when that trailer came out that everyone hated and everyone downvoted, including me. Look, I was one of them. And I'll stand by it.

[00:01:01]It was a drab, weakl looking, stinky looking trailer with ugly gray colors filled with schmuckucky Hollywood schmucks, dialogue that sounds like it was written for the CW.

[00:01:11]>> My dad is coming home. costumes that look like they belong in Batman or a Robin Hood movie. Um, there are famous Greeks played by black ladies, Grecian warriors played by transgender men, and no Greek actors in the entire movie.

[00:01:25]There's also a Cyclops whose eye looks like a schniz, and Zenaia. [screaming] So, I went to the first IMAX showing in my town, ready to despise this movie.

[00:01:40]And in the end, I have to say this movie is incredible. It's epic.

[00:01:45]It's awesome. It's a blockbuster. It's my favorite movie of the year and maybe years. That smug elitist dofaced putts Christopher Nolan delivers as usual. The terrible trailer does not do this film justice. The film is a complete triumph from start to finish. In a world with CGI slop, green screens everywhere, and volume screens everywhere, we thank God, have Christopher Nolan, who has enough clout to demand that this film be made up with real locations, real sets, real boats, real Trojan horses, everything but real Greeks. [singing] >> [music] >> Now, if you know me, you know I spent 20 miserable years of my life working in the film industry as a location manager, and I know firsthand the challenges in making a film like this. I can't stress enough how genuinely impressive this movie looks and feels. It's totally victorious. All cinematic aspects are mastered in this film. The shots, the music, the editing, the practical effects, the music, the sound. If you can't see it in IMAX, then just find the theater with the best sound in your town. The part where the screams of the Cyclops are echoing through the cave um still have me shaking.

[00:03:09]Low key, go over there. What's also stands out in this film is the structure and pacing. Like many of Nolan's other films, the story is nonlinear and is very much his own adapt adaptation of the source material.

[00:03:24]>> [laughter and gasps] >> There are many scenes cut out from the original poem and restructured to, in my opinion, the film's advantage. Instead of a long dialogue and negotiation, tricking the educated cyclops, we have a deformed monster of a cyclops that is out of a horror movie. Instead of a sequence with the crew eating lotus flowers for years, we have a lotus flower incorporated with the calypso scene. The gods in the film are mostly unseen and in the background, not standing in clouds in a council arguing with each other. And the Trojan horse sequence especially is filmed in a way I've never seen before in any other movie or adaptation. We spend time inside the horse with the soldiers stuck inside for weeks pooping and peeing and sweating all over each other. It's brutal and it's realistic. Um, the scene with the sirens is memorable where you don't see or hear much of them and experience the moment through mostly Adysius's reaction. It's the best siren interpretation since Ice Age 4: Continental Drift. Almost every scene is exciting and leaves you aruck with the exception of one. I would say the whirlpool part is a bit lackluster and but in no way does it ruin the film. Um, but my favorite scene is the pig scene, and that's all I'll say. It's so good.

[00:04:44]The art direction and costumes and everything fit the project for the most part, but I don't really know why there wasn't more of an effort to make them more authentic. For instance, the Batman armor that AA menom wears doesn't even look that cool. In fact, it sticks out like a sore thumb and is distracting.

[00:05:03]It's not as distracting as Sam Worththington's buzz cut in Clash of the Titans, but it's still distracting. Many of the actors are perfect. We'll we'll get to the ones that aren't so much, but specifically Matt Damon as Adysius and Anne Hathaway as Penelope knew the assignment. Damon, who has shaped his body to look statuesque, plays a troubled war hero with a genuine angst and guilt that you can see in his face.

[00:05:31]You see the conflict in his eyes with every soldier that gets sacrificed in his quest. It's the best Matt Damon has ever met Matt Damon. Hathaway is at the perfect age and she's perfectly beautiful for this role. She spends most of the movie sitting at a loom making a quilt, but every line she delivers sells the anxiety that she's going through as a mother and a queen who is trying to keep everything together as she waits for Adysius for 20 years. Charlie Stone as Calypso is more than perfect. She is such a nymph in in real life and in this movie. She's the nymphiest nymphiest lady I've ever seen. And the witch Cersei, played by Samantha Morton, completely steals the whole movie as my favorite character in my favorite sequence in the whole film. Also stands out um was Robert Patson who plays the main suitor trying to get with Penelope and he's just the perfect villain that you love to hate. Um, Spider Boy Tom Holland was good, too. If he would just say father and mother instead of dad and mom, there would really be no controversy about the American dialect.

[00:06:39]The rest of the dialogue in the entire film seems appropriate, but the moms and dads are weird for sure. Uh, my least favorite bit of casting was Zandia as Athena.

[00:06:53]Zenthia.

[00:06:55]I'm just not a fan of this lady and her mushy, constantly mopey face and the fact that she's everywhere. Before this film, there was trailers for Spider-Man and Dune. Enough already. What happened to Hollywood movie stars? Elizabeth Taylor? She ain't. I'm sorry. I'm convinced she's actually a god who's who's in our world just presenting herself to us everywhere.

[00:07:16]And I hate to say it because this actor is a whiny Hollywood self- victimizing ugly jerk, but John Leguisamo is a delight on screen playing the blind dog eye. Now, while we're on the subject of Latinos wearing white makeup and playing famous blind Greek, let's talk about the elephantess in the room, Helena Troy. As you may have heard, Helena Troy is played by Lupita Nango.

[00:07:42]I mentioned this to my dad and he said, "Hey, there's lots of dark-kinned Greeks." Yeah. Yeah. But not this dark.

[00:07:47]When When I first heard the news, I like many others thought this was typical Hollywood virtue signaling race swapping. It's because it is. In this stupid modern age, would it be considered racist for a white looking Greek woman to be considered the most beautiful woman in the world? I don't know. In this movie, I I do have to say it's not actually a big deal. mostly because her part is so small and inconsequential and she plays it well, but also because it's but also because it's established in the very first moment of this movie that some of the Greeks are going to be played by black people. Not only black people, but there are Greeks in Adysius's crew played by an Indian guy and even an Asian dude who looks like he's Japanese. But is this a big deal?

[00:08:41]YES. YES. IT'S A big deal. It's completely unnecessary and distracting.

[00:08:46]I'm sorry, but it is. It's the worst part of the film. Not because these actors do a bad job. It's because it's dumb. They're playing Greeks. They call themselves Greek in the movie. There's a scene where some people are speaking Greek. They call themselves Greeks. They introduce themselves as Greeks. It's like if they stuck Germans in the Moana movie to play Polynesians. It's weird.

[00:09:07]It it it keeps the movie from being the definitive adaptation of the Odyssey. It makes it more like that one episode of The Simpsons.

[00:09:15]Now, is it an insult not to have any real Greeks in the movie?

[00:09:20]Yes. Especially one particular Greek, me. Where was my role? And another Greek, John Stamos. Where was [screaming] John Stamos? John Stamos was right there. Just put John Stamos in the movie. John Stamos deserves it.

[00:09:34][singing] But the best bit of casting, of course, is Elliot Paige. He plays a perfect Grecian warrior. No notes.

[00:09:46]More of that, please. But in the end, these casting gripes are actually not important because the movie is so so good. Nolan could have casted the Muppets and it wouldn't even have mattered. So, as you can tell, I love the movie. In the end, am I satisfied WITH THE ODYSSEY?

[00:10:03]NO. [screaming] I WANTED TO HATE THIS MOVIE. I wanted it to fail. I spent 20 years of my life working my corlos in the film business just to be chewed up and spat out and forgotten. And I'm bitter and I'm angry. And I want everything in Hollywood to collapse in misery. Especially all the films that are filmed overseas, even in Greece. I wanted Nolan and his entire cast and crew to become penniless and subjected to working Uber Eats like me and Polyshore.

[00:10:30]>> And then I got to Uber Eats. That's what I do on the side now. I Uber Eats. I don't know. Maybe you shoulding try it, dude.

[00:10:37]>> But instead, it's a disparingly great.

[00:10:42]I just can't win.

[00:10:48][music] [music]