This is so bad the box should be labeled with an admonitory skull-and-crossbones

Rating: Null/10 (26 December 2003)

There are so many negative things I have to say about this that I don't know where to start. I am going to cut the crap and write my review simply by noting everything I hated about this and why. 1. All of the action scenes are so boring and derivative that they are about as fun as watching plants grow. If you've seen one swordfight, you've seen 'em all, unless you've seen "Army of Darkness", which this is a rip-off of in several ways. 2. It would help if I cared about the characters, that way there could be some suspense. Instead, every single character was created from cardboard, no matter how good the acting jobs were. I hate to break it, but revealing more of the plot does not reveal more of the characters. All of the "character development" is as about as effective as the attempts in an awful z-grade horror movie I saw recently called "Evil Town", where a bimbo and her guy exchange childhood stories for a few seconds before getting kidnapped and doing nothing else for the story other than titillation. Anyway, back to this review, and reason number three: Did I mention that this blatantly rips off "Army of Darkness"? 4. I was amazed at what the corporate bigwigs at Disney could get away with in a boring supernatural adventure that much better horror movies got in deep trouble for. Gee, the MPAA sure aren't playing favorites are they? 5. The plot, as you can probably guess from the title, not only really offers nothing new to the fantasy genre, but is only redeemable when resorting to a fork lodged in a guy's eyeball, a bird crapping on a guy, and renegade body parts on the move separately from the bodies they once belonged to. Have scenes like these been used in better movies? Hell, yes. At the same time, those better movies have generally been the enemy of mainstream film, which explains again why this boring dreck made it out from under the axe with a casual PG-13 rating, while much better movies are faced with full-on R ratings, or even NC-17s (depending on the current political climate). Sorry to sound redundant, but I can't get enough of trashing the MPAA because I've got fine reasons for it and believe I state my case well. 6. Also, this movie is miserably predictable. Even some of the stranger stuff I could see coming a mile away. 7. Yes, this is a movie that is way too long. For me, the three-hours-max of running time felt like an eternity. Now that I've appropriately blasted this piece of garbage for all it's worth, I would like to, in all fairness, lay down what I saw as redeemable points: gross, morbid jokes and what can be taken as an interesting comment on how those who try too hard to not conform end up conforming through their small-minded attempts at escaping a system that they feel doesn't meet their specifications. At the same time, I would finally like to note that even the redeemable points are murdered by how awful the movie is. I would rather sit through several hours of MTV than have to watch this overlong piece of devastatingly derivative rubbish ever again, for I may not be a Christian, but I certainly felt like thanking God when this movie was over.