“In the Heart of the Sea”

Rated PG-13

**

Opens Friday

“In the Heart of the Sea” isn’t a disaster, so we’ll have none of those “Thar she blows!” wisecracks in this review, thank you.

Nor is it an actual success. Director Ron Howard goes at this dutiful adaptation of the Nathaniel Philbrick nonfiction bestseller like a filmmaker assigned, not obsessed. The results tell us more about the state of digital effects and the price we’re paying as movie­goers for an overreliance on this technology, than they do about levitathans or the fear and wonder in desperate men’s souls, brought about by a blubber-based economy.

I mean, look: Of course a big-budget, 21st-century movie about high-seas whaling and a scarily large alabaster adversary brings with it a load of computer-generated imagery. In 1820, the Nantucket whaling ship Essex set off on a 2-1/2-year voyage, manned by a crew of 21, under the command of an insecure, overbearing greenhorn of a captain. Storm damage hobbles the Essex but the crew presses on, in search of lucrative whale oil.

Quicker than you can think of the dirty-limerick rhyme for “Nantucket,” the Essex runs afoul of a strange sight far off the coast of South America. It’s a sperm whale waging a one-whale protest against whaling.

What happened next was grim: a ship, smashed by its prey; survivors, in separate smaller boats; cannibalism; death for many; survival for a handful, including young Tom Nickerson (Tom Holland), who grows up haunted by the tragedy and turns into Brendan Gleeson (every young actor’s dream, if the young actor knows anything about anything). The framework of “In the Heart of the Sea,” as scripted by Charles Leavitt, finds the older, sodden Nickerson visited by novelist Herman Melville (Ben Whishaw), intent on learning the truth behind the Essex saga for the book he’s writing.

How’s this for perversity? The ordinary scenes between Whishaw and Gleeson have more going on than everything the movie’s actually about. Chris Hemsworth’s top-billed as the hardy first mate Owen Chase, who must put up with the deadly decision-making of Capt. George Pollard (a dull and miscast Benjamin Walker). The ocean-going sequences rely on what we’ve come to expect, or endure, in so many modern epics: digital effects that never quit, plus a frantic, lurching editing rhythm that never establishes a pleasing pace. It’s fair to say this of Howard’s film: You won’t believe your eyes. That’s the problem. It’s halfway to the realm of being a digitally animated feature. You see so many amazing sights, yet you don’t quite believe them; they look too good, too clinically pristine, too fraudulently pretty. Howard has Anthony Dod Mantle at his side, one of the best cinematographers alive, yet the light in the movie never really approximates either real life or old Hollywood.

“No right-minded sailor discards what might yet save him,” Hemsworth intones wisely, interrupting an impromptu burial at sea in the name of the survivors’ next meal. As the men’s fates are determined, one by one, and the days spent stranded at sea grind on, the film grinds on as well.

Even so, “In the Heart of the Sea” is a strangely jumpy entity, nervous about boring its audience for even a second. We never get a full, eerie sense of the isolation or the slowly accumulating dread of the situation. Melville finished his novel, of course, to widespread critical and public indifference. Then “Moby Dick” found and made its deserved reputation, long after Melville’s death. I wish Howard’s film had more of a distinct personality and drive behind it; Howard’s made some supremely enjoyable films, but this waterlogged, effects-crazed picture isn’t one of them.