Awful, awful, awful!!!

Rating: 3/10 (7 January 2012)

This was an absolute waste of time, I found the central character repugnant and the lead actress to be wooden and two dimensional, the style was kitsch, story was predictable so I hated every minute of 'The Artist'. I enjoyed James Cromwell (as ever) and others in the supporting cast where there were one or two moments where I had a brief chuckle (hence the 3/10 otherwise 0/10) at some small joke but there was very little in this to endear me to it. I write this as an avid silent movie fan (Chaplin, Lloyd etc. etc.) but this movie from the first moment had me wanting to punch the smug central character full in the face! I see there are one or two people who have written low score reviews on IMDb going against the groundswell of favourable opinion, but in my view this had little or nothing to recommend it as an experience and I almost want to see it again to check whether it is actually as bad as I experienced it today! I suspect this movie is a little like Marmite, you either love it or loathe it there really isn't much in between. I watched about five minutes of 'The Artist' before I started to think about leaving the cinema and going home (something I've done only once or twice over 35 years of going to the cinema!). To sum up this was a cinema experience I can barely believe and I'm looking forward to seeing anything at the movies just to erase the memory of this as the last film I've seen!