lol.

except, you know, younger, slimmer and more muscular.

the almost three hours of run time was more than bearable to sit through, and the film kept advancing fairly well and was so gorgeous-looking that i could have sat through another two-and-a-half… (+)

Jackie Earle Haley, Matthew Goode and Billy Crudup were the standout actors of this epic (+),

but i was a little disappointed with the way Dan Dreiberg was handled (in the original story and) in the movie; the film allowed him to retain his original ineffectiveness throughout the story, especially while he fought Veidt, and i felt there should have been enough growth for the character throughout the movie for the audience to feel his crushing, monumental blow toward the end of the story as everything fell apart. i can’t blame Patrick Wilson, it seems he captured the essence of the character, so i blame the writers and producers (-).

the ending of the movie is a lot more satisfying than the book’s original ending, because they stuck to the running plot thread of nuclear holocaust and war in the story instead of Moore’s / Gibbon’s silly, contrived, cyclopean “alien” that sat in the middle of Times Square to take the blame for the woes of humanity and the Russian/ American / Afghan war (+).

i was a bit put off that the movie spelled out many of the subtleties of the story and character development that Moore and Gibbons purposely left ambiguous and unanswered, for the viewer to figure out on our own… (-)

one of the worst examples of this concerned the identity of Laurie’s actual father, and the audience was thoroughly battered with explanations from Dr. Manhattan back to Sally Jupiter (-).

sheesh.

i liked many of the little touches the movie brought out, like the makeup job for the actor that played Richard Nixon (Robert Wisden); it was comical, i kept waiting for his (appliance) nose to grow or fall off every time he was onscreen (+).

the (way the) big “love” scene between Patrick Wilson and Malin Akerman (was filmed) was very distracting from the movement of the story, because this scene was supposed to buildup to inspire Dreiberg to bust Rorschach out of prison and that all-important decision seemed to be made randomly, ridiculously and inconsistently with his character in the book; it was done much better in the book and the motivation was appropriately rendered by the writer and artist than the talents of the production company interpreting the book (-).

4 (+)’s
4 (-)’s
_____

i liked the movie, despite its problems; i recommend the book,
however.