Overrated pretentious time-waster

Rating: 1/10 (23 May 2009)

Yes, it won 3 Oscars, but those were for Art Direction, Make Up and Visual Effects. So all the people that feel guilty they fell asleep, were bored or during the viewing did their manicure and planned their holiday: even the 'real' experts realized that it maybe looks OK, but should not be rewarded for content or entertainment value. I think the movie was made so irritatingly long to be sure everyone falls asleep and then decides that they must have missed a masterpiece.
It took my ultimate willpower to keep staring at irrelevant scenes (someone that our hero has met once comes by to say he leaves forever. "I will miss you, bye" and there he goes and never comes back .... another minute filled) and the pretense that every meeting the main character has is with 'meaningful people' that have a 'deep bond' with him while constantly nothing meaningful happened and all conversations were as shallow as in a porn flick.
Somebody had a nice idea (a life going backwards) and then forgot he can not write and made a whole long boring story about it desperately trying to impersonate John Irving (Life according to Garp, Hotel New Hampshire). The difference is that in Irvings work funny things happen, and weird scenes take place. Not things that soap writers would kick out of their scenarios as being too cliché.
A waste of talent (the actors), a waste of a potentially nice story, a waste of money and surely a waste of my time.
PS What sad people you Americans have become that the movie is rated PG 13 for, amongst other reasons, smoking! Does that mean all movies from the 20th century are PG 13 now? And all the cartoons that have smoking in it? And will people that smoke in the street and are seen by someone below the age of 13 be accused of molesting a minor? Keep fighting for your right to own guns and burn petrol, and keep forbidding people to do what only bothers themselves (smoking, drugs, loving somebody from the same sex) and then wonder why your society is going bonkers and you have a weekly random killing spree on your TV.