When I see a movie in theaters, I will write the five things you need to know about it.

5 Things You Need to Know About…

NOAH

1) I saw Noah almost two weeks ago and up until now, did not think it too important to get the message out.

2) Although an afternoon screening, I spent most of the first act fighting off sleep. Was I tired and fatigued? Probably, but the product on screen didn’t help.

3) The biblical story of Noah has a few key tenets: Noah built an ark, there was a flood that eradicated the earth’s human population (besides Noah’s family), Noah saved the animals (two by two!) by housing them on the ark during the flood, and there was a dove that brought evidence of land to mark the end of the global catastrophe. You would think that an aspiring cinematic epic such as this movie that Darren Aronofsky hoped to make would at least hit all of these key points effectively. Unfortunately, the director of point-of-viewed The Fountain and Black Swan manages to gloss over most of the ark construction (in deference for angsty Ham and Shem emotional baggage) and creates one dimensional CGI animals that seem to be more alien to Noah and his family than the Giant Rock Transformer Angels were to EVERY member of the viewing audience.

4) Maybe I should have already put up a SPOILER ALERT on this one because studio publicity wants to maintain the secret for as long as possible, but the chatter seems to already have pervaded the cultural gossiper. In case you are living under the rocks that may have inspired them, in Darren Aronofsky’s Noah there are Giant Rock Transformer Angels who build arks, destroy humans through CGI magic (and weirdly and uncomfortably compelling action sequences), and disappear into heavenly light. You can’t make this stuff up.

5) Noah is a movie by a filmmaker (the aforementioned Aronofsky) whose incredible creativity, ambition, and vision execute story in a most fantastical way. Unfortunately, his fantastical musings often hit the wrong notes in the wrong ways and Noah is flooded with these inaccessible decisions.