Poorly written, poorly conceived, but hilarious

Rating: 2/10 (6 January 2009)

I am utterly astonished at the general acclaim this movie has received. It is written with no complexity, no depth, and no nuance. The acting, particularly from the preacher character, is poor at best. I make Clint Eastwood the exception. He is always entertaining, but his broad characterization resides in a completely different film than the simple deliveries of all the other characters. Where all the other characters are underplayed, Eastwood is completely over the top, which is actually a good thing most of the time, since it makes the movie hilarious to watch, but made me never able to take it seriously as a drama.
As a comedy it was occasionally successful, but I found myself laughing at the movie more than with it. The times it was being intentionally funny generally involved Clint Eastwood using creative and old-fashioned racial slurs; funny the first 50 times, but the next 50 wore a bit thin.
This seems to be the kind of movie that you either love or hate. All the people I saw it with were astounded at the ballsiness of the choices, and yet how poorly-conceived most of them were.