intelligent, humorous, but ultimately pointless

Rating: 4/10 (13 November 2009)

If the point of a movie is to take the viewer on a journey then this movie runs out of gas on the driveway. I was really looking forward to seeing this film having seen the trailer but all it's savvy and undeniably fantastic performances from all the actors (particularly John Malkovitch) could not make up for what this film so obviously lacks.
None of the characters is likable - I mean, to think of any film randomly, in 'American History X' for example the viewer is led to sympathise with the protagonist who is a horrible murdering racist (once he's reformed obviously, which shows that in that movie there was at least some point to the story) showing that with the right screen play an audience can be made to identify with practically any character.
Conversely Burn before reading is completely bland in that respect, it fails to draw in the viewer, at no point did I even care what happened to any of the characters - I can't work out what the film is trying to tell me (if anything). I have just spent a totally beige evening with this movie, watching this is the equivalent to eating a bowl of sawdust for supper.
There may be a multi-faceted plot and a few laughs (derived from stellar performances rather than script) but there's no story, no character development, no twist, and then, when you're starting to wonder why you forked out for the DVD it comes to an anticlimactic, sudden and disappointing end.