Interminable, ponderous, absurd, occasionally hilarious

Rating: 2/10 (29 May 2015)

Reading these reviews -- well, some of them, I don't have all day you know -- it seems folks either really love this film or really hate it. I find absolutely nothing to love here. The movie is far too long, the plot has no cohesion at all (strange for a historical epic), and most critically the star is utterly miscast and over his head.
I don't know what Colin Farrell did to deserve top billing in a $150M project. He's a perfectly fine actor, but perfectly fine actors are a drachma a dozen. "Alexander" needed a big swinging dick to fill this role. Farrell looks like a guy from Duran Duran. Angelina Jolie is certainly A-list material, but her role is too fragmented and, quite frankly, her performance is so ludicrous that it supplied the only real enjoyment I derived from this whole mess. To see her literally covered with snakes and intoning absurd lines like "My son you must face your glorious destiny" with an out-REG-uss ack-SENT that was once the sole province of James Bond villains. The fact that Jolie and Farrell can't be more than a few years apart in age completes the fiasco.
Another point of hilarity, this time courtesy of Stone: during the Gaugamela battle scene, Alex is heard to order his troops "back and to the left!" not once, but twice.