Overlong, stiff, boring period drama

Rating: 3/10 (14 February 2016)

I'm a big fan of Kubrick's films, so back in the early days of DVDs I bought a boxed set that contained Dr. Strangelove, 2001, Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, Lolita and Barry Lyndon. I had never seen the last two on that list, so I was really looking forward to watching them. Lolita, apart from the intentionally creepy subject matter, wasn't bad. And then I got to Barry Lyndon.
On first viewing, I couldn't believe this movie was made by the same person who had made those others. What a dull, dragging, pretentious...did I mention dull?...movie this is. Now, I can handle deliberately slow-paced movies. I love 2001 and that film is almost as glacially paced as this one. But when that slow pace is coupled with a painfully boring story and wooden acting, it makes for a nearly unwatchable movie.
It probably didn't help that Warner Brothers crammed a movie that's over three hours long onto a single DVD, resulting in sub-VHS video quality. But within half an hour I was looking at the clock, wondering how much longer the movie had to go. By the time it reached the intermission an hour and 40 minutes in, when most movies would have the decency to just end, I was ready to give up. But I soldiered on and watched the remaining hour and a half...I should have just gone with my original instincts.
What made me return to this movie recently was that my wife is a big fan of 18th century period piece movies, so she had watched the last two thirds of this one on TV and asked me to get the DVD out so she could see the part she missed. She liked the detailed costumes and settings, and actually enjoyed the story. So I thought maybe my original opinion had been hasty and maybe I should give it another try.
Nope, this movie is just awful. Such flat, bland acting and boring direction it's like the film was given some experimental treatment to extract any emotion, action or interest from it. The main character, Redmond Barry, rises from poverty in Ireland to wealth and high society in Europe not by any virtues of his own, but mostly through stupidity, cowardice and cheating. Once he finally steals the wife of a sickly Lord, he loses any likability he had in the first half of the movie and changes suddenly into a disagreeable jerk who mistreats his wife and cheats on her while squandering her family fortune. Why exactly are we supposed to care about this guy? I guess you can't expect perfection every time, but it's hard to believe the same guy who created Dr. Strangelove, 2001 and Clockwork Orange was responsible for this mess.
Maybe it's just because I prefer sci-fi to period dramas, but I can't for the life of me understand why this clunker has an 8.1 average on IMDb and so many people have given it raving reviews. I can appreciate that the costumes, dialog and settings are all very authentic to the time period, but so what? That alone doesn't make for a good movie. This film should only be taken as a cure for insomnia.