Not even earnest acting by Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz could save this film

Rating: 1/10 (19 February 2007)

Horrible and pretentious. Not even earnest acting by Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz could save this film by Weisz's fiancé, writer/director Darren Aronofsky. Some woman in the cinema was snoring loudly and none of us bothered to shush her because it was understandably a snoozefest.
The main plot line is simple: Tom (Jackman) is a doctor married to Izzi (Weisz), a dying writer. Tom furiously tries to find a cure for her disease. He says, "Death is a disease, it's like any other. And there's a cure. A cure - and I will find it."
Then the story finds parallels with the story Izzi is writing in her book (in longhand, using old school pen and ink, for crying out loud, with no erasures!), where Tom and Izzi also play the characters. It also has a third subplot (?) where Tom is a bald, tattooed Zen-like monk-like man trapped in a snow globe. Lots of New Age mumbo jumbo, which was supposed to be visually poetic, tons of closeups of something that looked like yellow amber, and stylized cinematography.
The Fountain has terribly redundant and cheesy writing, too:
Izzi: Will you deliver Spain from bondage? Tom Verde: Upon my honor and my life. Izzi: Then you shall take this ring to remind you of your promise. You shall wear it when you find Eden, and when you return, I shall be your Eve. Together we will live forever.
Even hot, talented men like Jackman make mistakes. Imagine agreeing to shaving his head and chest for the worst sequence ever with an object (a tree). Tom Hanks and 'Wilson' in Cast Away did so much better.
That was 96 mins. of my life I will never get back. Don't make the same mistake I made. Watch something else.