A theme park ride is not a movie

Rating: 4/10 (31 January 2008)

I have nothing against undemanding entertainment. I didn't see the first film in this series, and I sure as hell won't be going to see any subsequent ones. For anyone familiar with the oeuvre of Daffy Duck, there is a clear analogy here. Remember 'The Scarlet Pumpernickel'? Well there Daffy is in the process of selling the idea of a movie to an obtuse and artless film producer. But when all is done, the producer just wants more spectacle and more violence and more plot twists and... (you get the idea).
So it is with NT-BOS. Quite probably, in the first place, there was a reasonable film about a guy's attempts to unravel a mystery regarding Abraham Lincoln's assassination. Might have been entertaining. Might have even encouraged a modicum of cerebral activity. However, some crass producer/studio exec stepped in and wanted more more more of the stuff of multi-million dollar production values and less, less, less character development and narrative logic.
The result is a complete mess in which we care not one jot for the future and safety of the characters because they have not been properly presented to us. We are only hazily aware what is going on because the filmmakers mistake speed for pace. And at the end of the film we have not experienced the ride that we were hoping for because someone didn't understand the truth that in the cinema, not enough is highly preferable to too much.