Pretentious Drivel

Rating: 1/10 (31 December 2011)

I was looking forward to this film, and in particular, to see if Natalie Portman had finally learned to act.
After all, in my humble opinion, herself and Hayden Christensen's lack of acting had fatally sabotaged the Star Wars Prequels, yet Mr Christensen appears to have learned from his mistakes, and in recent films, developed into a real actor.
Alas, casting Ms Portman into a role that required little speaking, may have seemed like a good idea, but her inability to act, and the woeful script means there is no way this movie was going to float! Except, that is, for those people that will watch someone filming grass grow, with a gratuitous sex scene thrown in here and there, and then rush to IMDb to write a review telling the world how brilliant the film is! Isn't it amazing that the majority of people aren't interested in watching high end ballet, yet in this film, we are asked to watch someone "pretend" to be a ballerina for over an hour and more.
It's like getting Larry Parkes, in "The Jolson Story", singing himself instead of miming to Joslon, with most of the audience not liking Jolson's music anyway! That's what happens here.
The script is terrible, plodding along, slapping us in the face now and then with the bleeding obvious, and even endowing the protagonist with ESP - when she guesses that our Heroine had a "wet dream" about her. I laughed during the fight scene when I guessed I should have been upset, and ended up shaking my head a lot at the poor attempt at "gritty" camera work, which just made me motion sick.
The only reason I endured watching this film past ten minutes was because my daughter wanted to see it. Otherwise, I wouldn't have even rated it worth writing this review.
This movie belongs at the bottom of Swan Lake.