Dune

Based on Frank Herbert’s wildly overlong novel, Dune follows Kyle MacLachlan’s Paul Atreides as he eventually leads an army of desert warriors in a rebellion against a galactic emperor. Filmmaker David Lynch, working from his own screenplay, kicks Dune off with an opening stretch devoted almost entirely to the plentiful exposition required to establish the movie’s expansive world and characters, and although this proves effective at providing context for everything that’s about to unfold, Lynch’s exceedingly, excessively dry approach to the material is (and remains) problematic for the duration of the picture’s padded-out running time and essentially prevents the viewer from ever working up any interest in or sympathy for the characters’ exploits – with the arms-length vibe perpetuated by the curiously wooden and lifeless work from an almost astonishingly talented roster of performers. It’s clear, at least, that Dune does improve slightly once it progresses into a comparatively slimmed-down and streamlined midsection that boasts a very small handful of compelling sequences, and yet, despite a raft of admittedly impressive sets and special effects, the picture remains distressingly unable to capture the viewer’s attention even fleetingly right through to its protracted, entirely uninvolving third act – with the end result a predominantly inert adaptation that seems unlikely to satisfy either die-hard fans of the 1965 book nor neophytes to Herbert’s expansive world.

*1/2 out of ****

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