Jekkyl Great family movie, the story is awesome, surprisingly great acting for such a film, and touching to boot.

ciyao-29248 Whale Rider is a really good film, to rate this film, I will give it an eight out of ten. It is very impressive that how Paikea has the courage to conquer the ill whales. Although it is dangerous, Paikea still chooses to save the whales and impress his grandfather. This minority style of life is very unique, it's culture can not be find in any other place in the world. How the chief of the tribe is inheriting is also interesting. From this film, the audience can get the global perspective of how a minority group live in New Zealand. However, the reason why I am giving this movie an eight out of ten is that I feel there is way too much descriptions about how Paikea's grandfather does not like to give the role to her, but too less about how Paikea is solving the problem with those stranding Whales. I feel the director should add more descriptions about how Paikea get the trust from his grandfather and how she becomes the inheritor of the minority group. Anyway, these are all my personal ideas. One of the main themes in this film is gender. This was also a major theme in the United States in the past --- men are more superior than women. This is relevant to this society's culture in the film because the chief of the tribe is usually inherited to male, but the main character Paikea is a female, causes a lot of issues. Paikea is a good evidence to support gender equality.

rhkoehler Whale Rider is definitely one of the best movies I've seen in a long time. The movie used very artistic camera angles and the acting was very good. I also thought it was wonderful that the director wanted to show off the Maori traditions and add in a lot of those really cool details you would get from an actual visit to New Zealand. Besides the awesome culture in the film, the movie was very well written and I thought it went into great detail about the story line, plus the characters were very well thought out and developed. Though, I did think that the ending was very dramatic and even a little cheesy. Plus, I thought that it was very odd that the grandfather, just all of the sudden was happy to have a granddaughter instead of a grandson. Though, the story line does kind of justifies it. With that being said, I still think that Whaler Rider is a great movie and I think it deserves a lot more "mainstream" publicity. 9/10 !!!

logatherum I have very mixed emotions about this film. I enjoyed watching it because there were not very many slow scenes. However, it did seem a bit forced in terms of the acting. I did not really particularly like any of the character's roles, because they just seemed to be trying to hard to act in my opinion. If I had to choose a favorite character though, it would be the little girl because she was so under appreciated, it was almost (literally) unbelievable, and unrealistic. Her grandfather was so mean to her, but to me, it was a bit unclear as to why exactly, and why he did not somehow grow to love her. I was also confused about who her father was. In the beginning, I understand that her mother died during childbirth along with her twin brother, and that the man with the long hair at the hospital was her father. However, when the movie fast forwarded after a few minutes about ten years later, I was completely lost as to which man (there were two that looked the same to me) was her father and which was her uncle! As the movie progressed, I grew tired of the grandfather's lousy, mean behavior towards his granddaughter, and his moping. I don't understand how he became so upset when he saw the whale on the beach, yet seemed to have a cold heart of stone when it came to people around him who loved him very much! I really wish that the grandmother would have divorced him during the film, like she kept telling the little girl she would. I think that there should have been more character development for the grandfather's role, because that could have made it more intriguing, and given the audience some insight into his mind. I also wish that the little girl would have had a best friend, or someone she could have stuck with throughout the film, because everyone seemed to be so against her that I wanted to just jump in and hug her! Overall, this film is interesting because of the Maori culture aspect, but I would not recommend it, or watch it again. My favorite thing about this film to be completely honest was their accents.