Disclaimer- anything would be sufficiently entertaining at 4 am, which is incidentally when i watched this.
so. you meet Ishmael; you like Ishmael. he's wide-eyed and kinda naive (yet adorable), so you expect character development. it never comes. he seems to get more naive as time passes, somehow, and it's irritating. he also experiences two whole emotions, these being (1) vaguely apprehensive (2) mildly confused. he's cute at first; then he's just stupid.
ahab is doing The Most and has a weird crush (?) on Ishmael. actually everybody has a huge crush on Ishmael, which is entirely valid but also kind of hilarious.
Starbuck is actually really good (even though he's 12 times more subtle than everyone else, which kinda stands out). You feel for him. He made me cry and I'm not a crier. now im crying again.
They occasionally show the very cute friendship between Ish, Queequeg, Dagoo (whom i love), and Tashtego but it's not developed much and is really only proven by a prolonged group cuddle session (which is not in itself a bad thing). speaking of, where's the We Are Married scene? just saying.
pip is adorable and sweet and i love him.
there is gratuitous cgi whale. meh.
there are pacing issues. you're like, "okay we're on day 1 of the voyage" and then they're like No It's Been 13 Months Somehow. like, I understand that you have to skip Ishmael's whale anatomy lectures from the book but there's some ~critical~ stuff that they shouldn't have left out (like character development! and the sperm squeezing scene (squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all morning long). and the queeshmael cuddle sesh. ooh, also the whale penis coat. what a nice book).
this could have worked with more than two parts and somebody on standby to tell Hurt to chill. there's a lot of plots that are started and never finished satisfactorily (ex. Mrs Ahab's storyline). But maybe i'm just a purist. idk. it was a decent reason not to sleep.
