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Comment by mauvehaus | Hacker News Reader

Depending on just how uninclined to rewatch The Odyssey you are, you may enjoy the hell out of Emily Wilson's review. For a taste: "It lacks psychological, emotional, political and ethical depth. Its narrative structure is gimmicky. The writing is abysmal. None of the characters has convincing motivation for their actions or words. There are no sex scenes, and all the food looks horrible."

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v48/n14/emily-wilson/an-unco...

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Did wonder about the review, it probably sold well in the news papers and part of me thinks that the Odyssey team might even agree with her, but IMHO it's mostly overblown? The movie is good an wildly successful, and maybe I've gotten less jaded, but felt like her criticism did not land ( saying that as someone who loves to poke holes at things and reading a good polemic).

She's entitled to her views, and others are entitled to think, like you, that her review is overblown.

My view is she has some good points about script and plot, given her expertise is in writing, but she's under-emphasising the importance of the visual arts.

Remember that Slashdot's review of the iPod was "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.". Not everybody has to like the popular thing.

I quite like watching Yahtzee's Fully Ramblomatic reviews. He's known for giving most games a kicking, but he does highlight what's good in a game as well as its bad points. I'd rather hear what he has to say than get a adverising puff-piece review from IGN. Even for games that I strongly enjoyed, he usually raises good points about them that I'd agree with.

Not a huge fan of the movie (largely because I think the story is rather meh and played out, sometimes classics can stay in the academy and are no longer fresh enough to merit a big budget retelling), but it had one major redeeming factor of not being as un-fun as that review.

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