Europa Report (2013) Daniel Wu, Sharlto Copley, Christian Camargo, Karolina Wydra, Michael Nyqvist Movie Review

Europa Report (2013)   2/52/52/52/52/5


Europa Report (2013)

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Europa, Jupiter's moon is known to have potential to support life. Hence a manned mission is sent to Europa to search for data proving existence of life there. 'Europa report' shows the difficult choices and sacrifices the crew has to make to fulfill their objective of sending valuable data to Earth for research.

The reason I loved watching movies as a child was they were entertainment; they delivered fun, excitement and all sorts of things which I didn't experience in my day to day life. Many decades later and my main reason for watching movies is still one of seeking entertainment, I want something which grabs me, moves me, amuses me and makes me think. This is maybe why I tend to struggle with those movies which come under the term "found footage" and why I have to admit I struggled with "Europa Report" as whilst we have this set up of a mission to Europa the on board surveillance footage of observing the crew is mind numbing. It is all so soulless as is the mix of this onboard footage with faux footage of the mission's bosses giving a press conference. To put this simply; this isn't entertainment, it is tedious.

Now in fairness "Europa Report" does built to some drama as we have a solar storm causing damage to the ship whilst the effects of their mission affect some more than others with one of the crew becoming sleep deprived plus there is of course what they discover on Europa. The trouble is that down to the observational style of the footage combined with documentary style coverage of a press conference does little to bring this to life.

But here is the thing about "Europa Report" and in fairness a lot of modern cinema; this is a movie which whilst not completely dominated by effects relies strongly on them to try and keep the audience entertained. I guess I am just old school where a good storyline, interesting characters and the talents of the actors is more entertaining than how effectively a computer can make it look like there are on a moon or are floating in the ship. It is why I can kind of understand why there may be many who have been brought up watching effects driven movies which might find this more engaging than I did and who might find them movies I enjoy tedious.

What this all boils down to is that "Europa Report" didn't do it for me and this ends up another one of those dreary found footage movies which for me struggle to entertain.


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