Using his same-titled 2006 book as a stepping-off point, film critic Mark Cousins makes an egregious error in narrating this ambitious 15-hour documentary film series. Its goal is to represent a “comprehensive history of the medium and art of motion pictures.” Cousins’s insanely repetitive delivery of every sentence sadly renders the documentary unwatchable — or at least unlistenable. Cousins has the incredibly annoying habit of ending every phrase like a question. Torturous. Valley Girls have nothing on Mark Cousins.
Perhaps, Cousins will eventually realize the colossal error, and hire a proper voiceover talent — think Morgan Freeman — to replace the atrocious narration track. Until that bit of wishful thinking comes to fruition, “The Story of Film” is a stillborn documentary about the seventh arts. You want it to be to good — and it very well might be; but there’s no way to tell in its current form.
