Simply put the film is not very good in most of its important aspects.
I see a lot of glib remarks about how modern audiences would dislike it because of its dated special effects. Not so. Its shortcomings have nothing to do with the special effects; its shortcomings are in all of the other elements that a viewer rightly expects from a good film.
The screenplay is, on the whole, poor. The source material is, of course, legendary, and there is some pleasure in seeing that translated to the screen. But deviations are plenty, and are universally misguided. In fact, rather bizarrely, the film does not attempt to deliver any kind of overall narrative. Major plot points are set up in the first act and then never returned to. Regarding the finer details, the dialogue is simplistic, with characters that are crudely drawn, and often outright boneheaded.
This is not helped by the acting. The leads are boring. A couple of the secondary characters are engaging, but have little screen time.
The action sequences which the film strings together are mostly bad and poorly choreographed. They are strangely dragged out and have no momentum. For example, one major set piece consists of the heroes, the Argonauts, aboard their boat, the Argo, rushing through a pair of perilous cliffs, the "clashing rocks". Except they don't actually rush. The boat just sort of sits there. We never really see the thing go forward. What should have easily translated into an exciting scene instead becomes boring and frustrating. The one action sequence I did enjoy was the battle with the looming iron giant Talos, perhaps because slowness here worked to his advantage and bestowed him with a threatening menace.
Music is a mixed bag. The title theme is grand and quite memorable. But the other incidental pieces are sometimes rather bad and distracting.
Finally onto the visuals. First off, the live action elements are pretty pedestrian, as is the camera-work. But the main point of interest are Ray Harryhausen's stop motion special effects. On the whole, personally, I was not a huge fan. I thought from an artistic perspective the designs left quite a bit to be desired. As to the animation, having stop motion interact with live action is probably a lot harder than it looks, so credit where it is due for these sequences looking at least slightly believable, especially the complex skeleton sword fight. Generally though it mostly looks rather clunky — again, with exception given to the iron giant. I think it's fair to judge by the standards to which I hold other works of animation, and by those standards it falls well short of masterpiece.
All in all, the film is just not a very good one, mostly let down by its poor screenplay and acting, and lacklustre action. The special effects are only of note for stop motion aficionados, and do not redeem it for a general audience.
I see a lot of glib remarks about how modern audiences would dislike it because of its dated special effects. Not so. Its shortcomings have nothing to do with the special effects; its shortcomings are in all of the other elements that a viewer rightly expects from a good film.
The screenplay is, on the whole, poor. The source material is, of course, legendary, and there is some pleasure in seeing that translated to the screen. But deviations are plenty, and are universally misguided. In fact, rather bizarrely, the film does not attempt to deliver any kind of overall narrative. Major plot points are set up in the first act and then never returned to. Regarding the finer details, the dialogue is simplistic, with characters that are crudely drawn, and often outright boneheaded.
This is not helped by the acting. The leads are boring. A couple of the secondary characters are engaging, but have little screen time.
The action sequences which the film strings together are mostly bad and poorly choreographed. They are strangely dragged out and have no momentum. For example, one major set piece consists of the heroes, the Argonauts, aboard their boat, the Argo, rushing through a pair of perilous cliffs, the "clashing rocks". Except they don't actually rush. The boat just sort of sits there. We never really see the thing go forward. What should have easily translated into an exciting scene instead becomes boring and frustrating. The one action sequence I did enjoy was the battle with the looming iron giant Talos, perhaps because slowness here worked to his advantage and bestowed him with a threatening menace.
Music is a mixed bag. The title theme is grand and quite memorable. But the other incidental pieces are sometimes rather bad and distracting.
Finally onto the visuals. First off, the live action elements are pretty pedestrian, as is the camera-work. But the main point of interest are Ray Harryhausen's stop motion special effects. On the whole, personally, I was not a huge fan. I thought from an artistic perspective the designs left quite a bit to be desired. As to the animation, having stop motion interact with live action is probably a lot harder than it looks, so credit where it is due for these sequences looking at least slightly believable, especially the complex skeleton sword fight. Generally though it mostly looks rather clunky — again, with exception given to the iron giant. I think it's fair to judge by the standards to which I hold other works of animation, and by those standards it falls well short of masterpiece.
All in all, the film is just not a very good one, mostly let down by its poor screenplay and acting, and lacklustre action. The special effects are only of note for stop motion aficionados, and do not redeem it for a general audience.