Clunky, chunky, cliché... I had to turn it off

Rating: 2/10 (22 January 2010)

I didn't begin watching "Invictus" with any hopes of seeing something unique, edgy or original -- after all, a bare sketch of the plot tells you this is another of the "Can-the-sports-team-make-it-against-the-odds? Oh-it-will-be-tough-but-in-the-end they'll-all-be-better-people-because-of-the-struggle" genre.
I had hopes that with Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon, it might rise above the cliché formula. No, it didn't. They are both OK, but not nearly OK enough to save this clunker.
The level of Hollywood formula is off the charts. Every camera angle, every scene, you can predict with startling accuracy. That doesn't necessarily have to doom a movie (although for me, it pretty much does, because I hate nothing so much as predictability, especially scene by scene), but here it's just so pat you wonder if Clint Eastwood was sleeping through the whole thing.
What really sunk this film for me, though -- I mean, I rarely ever turn off a movie, and I could only handle this one for 20 minutes, after which I used FF and skimmed a few scenes along the way to see it through to the 'exciting' conclusion -- was the incredibly awful dialogue. Awful. Stilted. Ham-fisted. Sounded like a bad Hallmark afterschool special writer had come up with it. Really really bad.
I like Morgan Freeman a lot. In fact, in the past, I had jokingly said to friends that I could listen to him read the telephone book because I like the way he delivers lines. I am reconsidering that joke. "We must (pause) work together (pause) if we are (pause) going to (pause) rebuild our country." Repeat that line about 80 times in the first 15 minutes. With the same awkward pauses. Maybe this was Freeman capturing Mandela really well -- I don't know. What I do know is it was awful to try to watch.
In any case, let me submit for your consideration that you save your time. If you read the plot synopsis and look at the poster, you'll already have as full an experience as this movie is capable of delivering.