How Many Clichés?

Rating: 1/10 (15 January 2011)

Well, I lost track. Seriously. I am still astonished at the high rating it had here at IMDb (which rarely lets me down) as that is what encouraged me to go.
Natalie Portman, whether the white swan or black swan, is an expressionless member of the chorus selected by the choreographer to play the lead in Swan Lake. Inexplicably, I might add, when there are far more talented dancers around her.
She is a one-note swan. Her facial expression never varies from sad, purse-mouthed and leaky eyed. I got so tired of looking at her face and it is shown just about all the time. To top it off, I felt absolutely no connection with any other character as the movie wound excruciatingly along on its hopeless execrable way to nowhere.
The lack of script is a serious flaw: but the graphic detail of what she does do is laid out: she vomits, she slashes herself, she lives with her mother, she has lesbian sex - sorta, but she has no background, no character, apart from mommy's girl, no friends, no interactions with others apart from the briefest of convos about ballet. The mother is completely cardboard - with matching dialogue - "I gave up my career for you, poor me".
This comes across as a horror movie with an unnecessary disgust factor aiming for the roof. I covered my eyes many times. Not in fear but in a kind of shame that a movie could be this bad. It is not even a good ballet movie, the dance sequences are choppy compounded by the uneven hand of the director everywhere.
When the audience started to laugh about 1/3 of the way through, I knew it was all hopeless. I joined in, that's how appallingly bad it all was. In the final scene, the laugh meter topped out. It is that unbelievable and unintentionally comedic.
1 out of 10 from me as minuses are not allowed.
Avoid.