a bad soap opera, with battle scenes

Rating: 3/10 (4 June 2006)

It's hard to see what this movie was trying to be. The script is written as bad soap opera and cycles repeatedly through 3 scenes: battle, quiet reflection, loud speech. Over and over and over. There isn't much else to it.
The characters - even Alexander & Aristotle - are flat. The moments of potential drama - meetings between powerful kings, great battles, Alex and his mom or dad - are reduced to shouting matches.
The movie itself is overdone and overblown. Ferrell makes a speech about nearly everything. One expects he might answer at the table "Oh yes, by the gods and by Zeus who defeated the Titans and dwells on high; by all these and all I hold dear; by the blood that I spill from these very veins; yes, yes I will hand up the salt shaker ..."
Nothing is subtle, giving rise to the soap opera feel: long looks, pointed stares, 100s of clichés. Ferrell is the worst, all strutting and rapid eye movements and shouting and glaring. Plummer is dull; Dawson and Jolie overact until it's painful.
The story is impossible to follow, even before it starts jumping around in time.
The battle scenes are different and intense. And as gory as one might like, especially when they fight the army that's on elephants and chop off some trunks and legs.
Alexander the man is the stuff of legend. This movie doesn't do anything for him.