I'm sorry, but...

Rating: Null/10 (15 November 2006)

.. this film was dreadful. It could have been one of the great conspiracy thrillers but instead it turned out to be a woodenly preformed, shoddily directed and poorly scripted piece of commercial pap that treats its audience like morons. Rarely have I seen a film with so much expositional dialogue (one of the great screen writing no-nos) in it. The 'mysterious' clues and riddles which were ludicrously simple to decipher in the book (none of the three supposedly great intellects in the book could work out that Newton's orb was the apple that fell on his head? Please!) were, if anything, spelled out even more. The dialogue was stilted and unintentionally funny with audience members at the screening I attended laughing at moments intended as high drama. I believe this was also the case at its premiere in Cannes where they know a thing or two about movies. Ron Howard, a director I have great respect for, got it wrong on just about every level, most notably by resorting to the same visual gimmickry he employed in A Beautiful Mind in an attempt to make sure everyone got what was going on. Don't worry, Ron, we got it alright - you made sure of that! All in all, this is one of those films all involved will look back on and wonder what might've been. The major movie disappointment of the year.