Overbearing and boorish

Rating: Null/10 (16 September 2005)

What a self-indulgent snorefest this one was. At over 2.5 hours long I thought it'd never end, and pity those who paid real money to sit through it in a cinema.
I ended up disliking the "hero" much more than I disliked "Bill" since at the very least Bill could be taken at face value without appearing one-dimensional. He was a real person with a breadth of beliefs and emotions and D. D.-L. did a terrific job playing the character. DiCaprio, on the other hand, was almost cardboard and frankly I've seen better drama from the protagonist on "The Benny Hill Show." Perhaps less time spent pondering his own legendary acting skills and more time considering what real people look and behave like would be well spent.
Cameron Diaz looks and behaves like she's dressed up for Halloween in this one, she never convinced me her character had the least interest in anyone around her or in anything going on.
The shot at the end where the graves are seen in front of an increasingly modernized, more familiar NYC was disliked by several people I spoke to for some reason or other but I actually enjoyed it and thought it was a good touch.
3 points for the morphing NYC time-lapse scene
-4 points for DiCaprio
-2 points for Diaz (at least she had less dialogue than the leading man).
-1 for the soundtrack
Don't rent. Consider giving as a gift to someone that you don't quite like, especially if they're smug and will find it difficult to state openly that they dislike this -- rest assured they'll be tortured for over 2 hours yet feel compelled to deny it.