Portman is great, but this movie is one of worst I've ever seen

Rating: 1/10 (16 January 2011)

Worse than Zardoz, worse than Ishtar, anything.
Zero understanding of ballet leads to ridiculous major premise: "ooh, to do zee black swan you need to be The sexeee!" This is utter nonsense. Anyone who knows anything about ballet and in particular, Swan Lake, knows this. But the writer tries to get away with this huge, vulgar misunderstanding--and he doesn't get away with it.
Uses every cliché in the book, and every vile sexist cliché, too: baad mommy (the cake! the cake!,ooh!, the horror, the horror!), classic controlling abusive artiste dom male who uh feels that masturbation is the answer to everything; pseudo-ballerina actresses who look, speak, and act like leftovers from teen slash movies. Feh.
A waste of time from start to finish, and a tragic waste of fine actors. I don't know how or why this movie got made. I had been looking forward to seeing it; having seen it, I'm so sorry I went.
It could have/should have been great; instead, it's an embarrassment.