The emperor has no clothes, people--this film is UNWATCHABLE

Rating: 2/10 (26 May 2008)

This movie is the most over-hyped, underwhelming mess I have seen in some years. Incoherent and idiotic, it combines disgusting brutality with stupid writing and unconvincing acting, creating a torpid, bloated, overwrought dreary mess that is so unpleasant, so torturous and so dismal that it is akin to having a tooth extracted without nitrous oxide. I literally thought this was a joke for a while--how could millions of people be so in love with this mess--but apparently people are lemmings.
The central character is SO APPALLINGLY EVIL--so mean, so insane, so brutal, such a DICK--that it just slams the film into the wall. He is so bad that watching him becomes a chore, and silly at the same time.
Direction of the actors reacting to him is like something out of a junior high school production of "King Lear". Everyone either stammers and quakes and stares in abject fear at this schmuck or salutes him with a "jahwohl" that would have given Hitler a hard-on.
The art direction would be fine if we were all beetles and lived in humus in the forest. As I am not, it was barely discernible on the screen, with the saturation of darkness and the fuzzy lensing and the cobwebs and smoke and all the other crap he threw into every shot. The creatures are nothing you haven't seen in the cantina scene in Star Wars back in 1977. Feh.
This film is TERRIBLE. DO NOT FALL FOR THE HYPE. Puppets and CGI notwithstanding, it is a train wreck.