YMMV / The Perfect Storm

• Adaptation Displacement: Did you notice the book wasn't mentioned on the main page?
• Critical Dissonance: The film earned mixed reviews from critics (47% on Rotten Tomatoes, and 59/100 on Metacritic), but grossed $328.7 million worldwide against a $120 million budget, making it the eighth highest grossing film of 2000 worldwide.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Alfred Pierre. The main thing the film reveals about him is that he apparently gets a lot of tail when he's ashore. There are definitely plenty of worse ways than that to receive a one-note characterization.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The movie is quite popular in Kazakhstan.
• He Really Can Act: John C. Reilly is well-known for being in comedies, but he gives off a great dramatic performance in this movie. His character's dying words as he sinks to his death alongside his crew mates particularly stands out:
  This is gonna be hard for my little boy.
• Memetic Mutation: The phrase "perfect storm" has entered the public lexicon for any situation (good or bad) where several unexpected factors all combine to produce a large result.
• Nightmare Fuel: Sebastian Junger's book goes into horrifically vivid detail of what it is like to drown, based on first hand accounts from people who had almost drowned and were able to be revived.
• Retroactive Recognition: Hey, isn't that President Allison Taylor and Ethan Kanin on the sailboat?
• Tear Jerker:
  • Linda Greenlaw gives a speech at the wake for the Andrea Gail crew that doesn't leave a dry eye in the house.
  • There's also an understated scene afterward with two of the wives trying to cope with the loss of their husbands.
  • "This is gonna be hard on my little boy."
  • Followed up by the captain resigning to go down with the ship, which is itself followed up by a thoroughly haunting final glimpse of the ship disappearing into the depths of the ocean.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: As one of the first photorealistic CGI depictions of weather on film, the titular Perfect Storm looks pretty incredible for something made in 2000, as does the turbulent Atlantic Ocean.

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