Boring, boring, boring - oh, and inaccurate, too.

Rating: 1/10 (7 December 2004)

I had the rather unfortunate idea of watching this movie last night. Of course, knowing the absolute monstrosity that "Troy" was, I did not expect to see something even remotely faithful to the events as given to us by reliable historical sources such as Plutarch, but rather a noisy Hollywood fanfare for the common man... Or at least what the American showbiz thinks the common man is.
Oliver Stone's "Alexander" proved to be even less than that. I received the first shock when I saw Antony Hopkins as the narrator. Common sense says that the first step you can take to ruin your movie is to use a narrator. The second step is to overuse the narrator (as Carl Macek did in the horrendous "Robotech") and start shredding the audience's nerves. However, old Ptolemy was not the movie's worst part. In fact, he seemed to be its only redeeming factor!
Why am I saying this? First of all, the scenario was weaker than a dried-up twig, distorting Alexander's formative years, then omitting another formative period (which included, among other significant events, his entrance to Egypt, where his apotheosis took place; oh, I forgot: Egypt prohibited the producers to film there after reading the script). And the rest was one endless sequence of decadent oriental parties with tons of homosexual innuendoes, in a blatant marketing attempt to caress the ears of the gay community. Oh yes, and two badly-directed battle scenes... So much for the super-duper-production.
The only actor who stood up to the value of his profession and to his name was, predictably, Mr. Hopkins. The rest never rose above the murky waters of the trite dialogues, which only had two modes: either an incessant, drunken yelling or a hush-hush talk between the two "lovebirds", as the scriptwriter so stupidly presented Alexander and Hephaistion (although it is twice mentioned by Plutarch that Alexander despised homosexuality... But who cares about history when marketing needs the gay community?). This quickly tired the audience and destroyed all of Stone's hopes to achieve the so desired by directors suspension of disbelief.
Mrs. Jolie's screams could serve well, had she been a guest in Jerry Springer's show. Pity that physical beauty is not enough. Colin Farrell simply does not have the talent to play such a multi-faceted character as Alexander. Val Kilmer's Philip was, well, convincing for what Kyle and Kalogridis wasted precious ink and paper-producing trees to "create".
As for the props and scenery, they were outrageous. First of all, even old Italian low-budget mythology-inspired films had more elegance than this horrid, putrid mess that looked too much like an elementary school theatrical show. And why was it that, in the panoramic views of Babylon, the viewer could easily see modern cities in the background? Not to mention the usage of Greek and Greek-looking alphabet to write English texts on the scrolls! Obviously someone is desperately lacking in inspiration, I see...
Don't waste your money, people.