What a Great Mediocre Movie!

Rating: 5/10 (11 April 2018)

This movie shows what can happen when you "do everything right."
Great cast and acting, impressive sets, costumes and period details, very good cinematography, for the most part solid screenwriting and very good direction.
+10 stars for all of that, and Hercule Poirot's (Kenneth Branagh's) amazing, can't-look-away-from mustache!
-5 stars for a dated and contrived story, for stilted, pretentious dialogue, for seeming small and dull in spite of exotic locations and setting, and for the overpowering, compellingly distracting, scene-hogging, more-screen-time than anything else and often in nearly fill-the-screen closeup, bizarre and completely outlandish mustache of the main character, Hercule Poirot. It's hard to even pay attention to what the characters are saying, how the plot is developing, or other details of the scene when that face-rat is on screen.
However, the primary failing is simply that even great talent and generous resources cannot always produce great movies. But hey, it's just mediocre, not horrendous on the scale of the 60s epically-over-the-top and scandalously-expensive mega-flop Cleopatra, starring none other than mega-stars Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and Rex Harrison.
So, kudos for that!