Review: The Impossible

A regular family - Maria (Naomi Watts), Henry (Ewan McGregor) and their three kids - travel to Thailand to spend Christmas. They get an upgrade to a villa on the coastline. After settling in and exchanging gifts, they go to the pool, like so many other tourists. A perfect paradise vacation until a distant noise becomes a roar. There is no time to escape from the tsunami; Maria and her eldest are swept one way, Henry and the youngest another. Who will survive, and what will become of them?

I actually watched this movie WEEKS ago, but I just never got around to this review...whoops. But anyway. I wanted to watch this movie ever since I saw the trailer for it in theatres.

I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. It was a really emotional movie, and I cried a lot, I'm not going to lie. It's really inspiring, and it's so unbelievable that you know it's real, as one of my teachers says. It literally seems so impossible, yet somehow, it's so true.


This is a really emotionally charged movie, and it's really about the characters and their journey. I loved seeing the characters grow, and you can really see the difference by the end. I think the movie was done really well, and you felt the pain and sadness and anger and desperation as you watched the movie. It felt so real, and it made you feel like you were there. The acting was amazing, particularly the kids. It was so raw and innocent, yet so incredibly solid.

But of course, there were some pesky things about the movie that I wasn't so fond of. First, there was the fact that the end seemed completely rushed. The characters spent the majority of the movie looking for one another, and suddenly, all of them were reunited at once. The part RIGHT before the scene was extremely exhilarating because you were just rooting for the family, knowing the ending, but also fearing that it would never come. And then everything just suddenly fell into place. Maybe it's how it actually happened. I wouldn't know. But it just felt really awkward I guess. It didn't feel real in that moment. And the second thing shouldn't have been as big of a deal, but it just really stuck to me and made me think about the movie industry. And that is that the actual family that this is based on isn't white, and they aren't British. Heck, half the crew isn't even white, I think. But they changed it to a white family, changing the names so it wasn't Hispanic. Why? Maybe it was that they couldn't get the people to play a Hispanic family. Maybe it was because they needed big names to push this movie forward. Maybe it was because the actors and actresses were fantastic and white (they are all fantastic btw). But I can't help but think that it also changes a lot of your perception. Media continues to be so white-washed, and it's like it's advocating that it was a white family that pulled through this, not a Hispanic one. It's giving a possible message that a movie can't do as well if you have people of color. It's possibly giving a message that it's whites, not POC that can do what the family did. It's possibly giving the message that okay, yes, a woman can be a good doctor and take care of herself when she was wounded (to a certain extent, of course), but that maybe a Hispanic woman can't or that it's too far a step for society to accept. Who knows? It could be for any number of reasons, and I'm not trying to imply anything about anybody because I'm sure the actual family agreed with the casting, but it just makes me think.

I'd definitely say that you should watch this movie. It's really stuck with me, and it's really inspiring. It's so raw and emotionally charged, and you'll definitely need tissues, but it's just SO good.

Rating: 4/5