Less than meets the eye

Rating: 6/10 (6 January 2007)

I haven't read the other comments, so I apologize if others brought this up.
The visual repleteness of Children of Men exceeds the viewer's capacity to take it in. I understand that most good films require more than one viewing. Still, any good film must entertain, and it's hard to be entertained by something visually so rapid and complex that you're constantly distracted from the characters and dialog. A movie is not a painting.
I also had a lot of trouble understanding dialog, because of rapid speech, accents, occasionally slang, background noises, and occasional mumbles. Again, to some extent this is just current film idiom that we're all used to--movies are supposed to confuse us likereal life. But it does not add to my enjoyment to be constantly worrying whether I'm following the story correctly because I know I'm missing maybe 20% of what is said,
Fortunately, however, Children of Men has an extremely simple plot, characters that don't develop, and a handful of very basic ideas, so in spite of the visual and auditory challenges, you do get the gist. My problem is that a movie has to have more than a gist, and this one doesn't.