Monterey Memories

"It's a place where the color of a leaf can make you tremble," where you can "spend some time alone with yourself." It's California's Monterey Coast, a place which apparently inspires prose both purple and redundant. After an opening which tries to emotionally bludgeon the viewer with heavy rhetoric and soaring music, Monterey Memories settles into a fairly unremarkable video catalog of natural sights, lodgings, restaurants, and attractions in Carmel, Big Sur, Monterey, Pebble Beach, Pacific Grove, Carmel Valley, and parts of the Salinas Valley. Very little historical information is offered: mostly just establishment names and the ubiquitous zoom-out shot. Pretty, but not terribly compelling, Monterey Memories is an optional purchase for larger travel collections. (R. Pitman)