"If I had known it was gonna be an artsy film, I would [have] ... seen something else." This is a quote from my roommate Marisa Hernandez, after returning home from a movie date. This statement kept me from seeing Whale Rider when it first came to theaters. She claimed to have fallen asleep in the middle of the show. Her simplified syntagma, "...it's about a girl who rides a whale...", didn't spark my interest. I …showed first 75 words of 962 total…

…showed last 75 words of 962 total…giving me a valuable reminder. And by the way, when I told Marisa I had rented Whale Rider and invited her to give it a second chance she told me she did like the film, she just wasn't expecting something deep that day. It seems that Whale Rider has an impact on every soul who sees it, even if they are slow to embrace it. Now that's the sign of a good piece of art!