Well recorded sound on DVD, little else

Rating: 3/10 (12 March 2001)

I rented Gladiator (1) to try out my new home theater speakers (upgraded from "2.1" to "5.1") are any good and (2) to see if Roger Ebert is right, whether this could be the worst movie ever to win the "best picture" academy award. The answer to both my questions is "yes."
Wow, this flick really sounded great on my stereo, dts encoding a special treat! Even the perfunctory and unremarkable "epic music" sounded good. I was able to tune up all 5.1 of my speakers, so don't touch my levels, I got them set just the way I want 'em. And now, the bad news.
Gladiator is overlong, overdirected, underscripted, and totally forgettable (aside from a being DVD showcase). It's hard to make a good epic. Spartacus this ain't. Moreover, as good as the sound was, the visual effects looked artificial. The tigers in one of the fight scenes were particularly cheesy. In the action sequences, it looked like the actors were filmed as they moved slowly, and then were restored to real speed through mechanical/digital means... this makes everything well focused, but ironically, a perfectly focused swinging forearm w/broadsword looks more like claymation than reality.
The acclaim of this movie doesn't astound me--people like gladiator movies. Indeed, all I kept thinking of as I watched was Peter Graves' line from "Airplane": "Joey, do you like movies about gladiators?" Hey, at least I got a laugh when I thought about this... 2.5 hours of total humorlessness is tough on a viewer. "Saving Private Ryan" had more laughs than Gladiator. Oh wait... the exploding firebombs in the opening fight scene had me howling. I love anachronism.
Such an oh-so-serious tone should be saved for the likes of Schindler's List or Judgment at Nuremberg. Gladiator fails at profundity. In trying to be an action flick, it fails worse--it's an hour too long. As an ode to history, I have no idea--I have problems identifying, much less cheering for, the "good Romans" of the reign of the Caesars.