Think you might have to be American to get this one....

Rating: 6/10 (17 February 2009)

If I was American, I'm sure I would have enjoyed this film - it's beautifully made, has incredible effects, great acting, amusing characters and an intriguing story.
But... it's just a bit too sickly sweet and schmaltzy - and presents a far too rose-tinted, American-nostalgia-focused account of twentieth century history for a foreigner like me to appreciate. This isn't a criticism - it's an American film after all - more an observation from an outsider's perspective.
I suppose a British equivalent might be the film "Zulu" - great fun to watch if you're a Brit, but kind of insulting if you're a Zulu - and complete pap as far as history goes.
It also didn't need to be three hours long. I'm guessing that pretty much half the run time of the film could have been left on the cutting room floor without any effect on the continuity of the story-line - and we would have been spared the inanities of scenes like the series of coincidences leading up to the road accident: pointless, flashy film making all to make a trite point summed up by the phrase "stuff happens".
Anyway, I can definitely imagine bigger wastes of three hours of my life and there's always the amusement of waiting to see if the baby Brad Pitt will end up disappearing forcibly into someone's womb at the end of the film....