Plot without Substance

Rating: 2/10 (30 December 2007)

I love fantasies; I'm a huge fan of the genre. And the idea of a new Princess Bride-like movie, funny and engaging, is very appealing. Unfortunately, I've never read the book, though I've heard good things about Neil Gaiman, of course. Therefore, I can't comment on how close the film was to the source material. I can, however, say that this was a terrible movie.
Visually, it's not bad: there's a lot to look at. The acting is all right, even though some of the accents are quite off.
But the movie can be best summarized this way: it is plot without substance. There's nothing to this movie: the storyline rings shallow, and there's no real feeling to it. It's simply one plot point after another without any depth. The humor doesn't hit the mark, and the film just ends up very flat and lifeless. It's obvious from the first five minutes how the plot will be resolved, and the film never seems to make an effort to get the viewer to care about that ending.
I've seen worse films, certainly, and parts of the disjointed plot are mildly entertaining, but overall this film was quite a failure.