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Movies where the narration/voiceover feels nonessential?

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tosleepanddream

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I watched War of the Worlds (2005) tonight. I'm not really a fan of Tom Cruise as an actor, so it was just okay. I think Morgan Freeman is one of the greats, but his narration at the beginning and ending felt mostly unnecessary.

Are there are other movies where you feel like you could take or leave the narration/voiceover?
 
Wraith said:
Please, no one say Blade Runner....SERIOUSLY!
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Sadly, I absolutely agree with the 3rd point on this list of screening notes.

Bladerunner-studio-notes.jpg


The V/O is absolutely dreadful and ruins the incredible atmosphere the film has.

"Sushi, that's what my ex-wife called me. Cold fish"
 
Bobson Dugnutt said:
Sadly, I absolutely agree with the 3rd point on this list of screening notes.

Bladerunner-studio-notes.jpg


The V/O is absolutely dreadful and ruins the incredible atmosphere the film has.

"Sushi, that's what my ex-wife called me. Cold fish"
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There’s going to be spat ladds!
(See what I did?)
 
The Gentlemen is my favorite example of this, I went and cut out all the narration - it totally interrupts the flow and pulls you out of the story. And it's always stuff you see in subsequent scenes anyway so there's no reason to be told about it first. One of my favorite movies once the narration is cut out.
 
Stranger Than Fiction.

(I thought that would be a funny answer but now that I've typed it it's not particularly funny)
 
There was some recent movie that I noted in the review that the Voiceover seemed unnecessary, but I also noted the movie wasn’t good enough to want to do anything about it. I’m not sure what the movie was though. Perhaps the recent Jackman movie Reminiscence?
 
Dances with Wolves (1990)

I honestly wasn’t a fan of the narration, to be honest.
 
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asterixsmeagol said:
Really, though, I can't think of any movie that has a voiceover I've actually thought was a good addition.
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Voiceover can serve two purposes: Telling instead of showing, and conveying the narrator's mindset and personality. There can be times when you wanna tell instead of show but they're incredibly niche. Usually it's just a way to smooth over failures in cinematic storytelling. They're the perfect thing to slap onto a bad film at the last minute to "fix it in post". This can also be a way for execs to ruin a perfectly good film. Really, the part about conveying the inner thoughts of the narrator is generally the only merit to narration. It's something books do all the time, so why not movies? It's a stylistic choice, really.
 
The one that always annoys me is Dark City, because - like Blade Runner - it's an example of not trusting the audience to follow the story as presented, and instead trying to do a desperate "Honest, if you stick around for 45 minutes or so there's gonna be some wild scifi hijinks" carrot-dangle.
 
Ender said:
Voiceover can serve two purposes: Telling instead of showing, and conveying the narrator's mindset and personality. There can be times when you wanna tell instead of show but they're incredibly niche. Usually it's just a way to smooth over failures in cinematic storytelling. They're the perfect thing to slap onto a bad film at the last minute to "fix it in post". This can also be a way for execs to ruin a perfectly good film. Really, the part about conveying the inner thoughts of the narrator is generally the only merit to narration. It's something books do all the time, so why not movies? It's a stylistic choice, really.
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I'm working on a Riddick (2013) edit that retains just his opening line, "Don't know how many times I've been crossed off the list and left for dead...So this? This ain't nothin' new.". Part of the character's mythology is that he winds up in bad situations (in prison, on his way to prison, on an inhospitable planet), with very little explanation, so this one simple voice-over sells the setup well, and it's a perfect echo to his short voice-over at the beginning of Pitch Black that's also just in the opening scene. Of course in Riddick (2013), both theatrical and unrated, the voice-over continues because he has to lead the audience into the flashback showing how we get from Chronicles of Riddick to here. There's your failure.
 
Dune 1984

I do think the narration here inspired the use of tapes Cooper narrated into in Twin Peaks, there it's a thought out plot device that's used only occasionally. But here narration is all overdone, unmotivated, unnecessary context. The film does not trust the audience to understand the events on screen without huge chunks of the literal book source material spoken out loud over footage as if they were the characters' inner thoughts. Meanwhile, the new Dune doesn't do this at all and is perfectly understandable entirely through information presented on-screen.
 
addiesin said:
Dune 1984

I do think the narration here inspired the use of tapes Cooper narrated into in Twin Peaks, there it's a thought out plot device that's used only occasionally. But here narration is all overdone, unmotivated, unnecessary context. The film does not trust the audience to understand the events on screen without huge chunks of the literal book source material spoken out loud over footage as if they were the characters' inner thoughts. Meanwhile, the new Dune doesn't do this at all and is perfectly understandable entirely through information presented on-screen.
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Can't speak for the Theatrical Cut (still yet to break out the disc) but I think it works well in (~60% reduced form, according to the cutlist) Spicediver's Alternative Edition Redux. Found the new Dune perfectly understandable but rather dull in comparison to this edit, maybe a little internal monologuing would have made it feel (in my eyes) less pretentious.
 
ParanoidAndroid said:
Can't speak for the Theatrical Cut (still yet to break out the disc) but I think it works well in (~60% reduced form, according to the cutlist) Spicediver's Alternative Edition Redux. Found the new Dune perfectly understandable but rather dull in comparison to this edit, maybe a little internal monologuing would have made it feel (in my eyes) less pretentious.
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It's a tough call because so much of the first book is made up of the character's internal thoughts. It feels perfectly natural in a book, and Herbert uses it to great effect. The dinner scene in particular is a masterwork, in my opinion. Shifting from inner thought, to spoken word, to awareness of the unspoken between characters. It's great.
 
I kinda wonder if Jennifer's Body really needs all that voiceover from Needy. The whole framing device of her recalling the murders from prison seems kinda cliche, honestly. If there has to be voiceover at all, they could've probably just ended during in her opening monologue after she says "I might be insane, but I’m not desperate" or "A lot of people ask me if I’m sorry I did it." And then that's it... just show us what happens instead.
 
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