Overrated... am I the only one to think so?

Rating: Null/10 (12 July 2005)

The highest praise I have for this movie is that the music is good, but of course that is no thanks to the filmmakers. Your 160 minutes (180 for the director's cut) would be better spent listening to Mozart's music alone.
How could I say such things about this Best Picture Oscar winner, this universally acclaimed masterpiece, which has been included among films such as Citizen Kane and the Godfather on numerous "Bestest-ever-movies-in-the-history-of-the-past" lists? Well, I also disliked "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (Forman's other vastly overrated dud) so I am no stranger to blasphemy against the film canon.
To be fair, I liked this movie the first time I saw it -- when I was 8 years old. I liked it largely because it was one of the few "grown-up" movies I could fully understand at the time. Upon viewing it again a good decade years later, I realized why: the film explicates its themes in such a blatantly obvious manner that it insults the intelligence of "grown-up" viewers.
The most flagrant and pervasive example: F. Murray Abraham's (Salieri's) entirely redundant voice-over narration. Tom Hulce's over-the-top performance as an arrogant, childish Mozart, complemented by Abraham's over-the-top sulking and scowling, is more than enough to tell us that Mozart is obnoxious and that Salieri dislikes him. But alas, Salieri must narrate to us his already obvious disdain and shock that this person could be "God's instrument." The viewer can certainly also gather from Salieri's exaggerated swooning over Mozart's scores that despite his contempt for Mozart the person, he is still infatuated with his music. Still, we must have this narrated to us as well.
Two-time Academy Award-winning screenwriter William Goldman ("Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," "All the President's Men") says that what makes a great screenplay (and thus, a great movie) is SUBTEXT  what is happening beneath the surface of the scene, what is conveyed and understood, but not stated. In "Amadeus," there are fleeting moments of subtext, such as Katerina Cavalieri's piano lesson with Salieri, in which it is clear that Salieri is in love with her, and the subsequent scene at the opera, in which it is apparent that she has had an affair with Mozart. But the subtext in these scenes is instantly killed by the "Spark Notes"-like narration in which Salieri tells us that he loved her, and knew at that moment that Mozart had "had" her. And Salieri, is it really necessary, while burning a statue of Jesus on the cross (a heavy-handed enough symbol as it is), to narrate that you are angry with God? Other annoyances abound in "Amadeus," including the miscast Hulce, Jeffrey Jones, and Elizabeth Berridge, their laughable acting not aided by their very American accents. It becomes difficult to believe we are watching 18th century Germans when one actor sounds like a Shakespearean Brit and one sounds like a cowboy.
The movie does boast some strengths aside from Mozart's music: the art direction and costumes are terrific, for instance. Even the theme of pride and jealousy among artists is valid and powerful; if only it were handled with just a touch of subtlety then this could have been the masterpiece it is widely (and wrongly) considered to be.