Rare combo of tasteless and boring

Rating: 1/10 (22 October 2010)

I'm at a loss. The book was so dull I couldn't finish it, and decided to watch the movie instead to discover the 'amazing' characters and 'gripping' plot everyone's talking about.
I can't work out whodunit in an episode of Miss Marple, but even I was ahead of the protagonists. The thought that this was a murder mystery that had flummoxed the greatest brains in Sweden for 40 years was laughable. Clunky plot, ridiculous clues, convenient misidentifications - this has got the lot.
The only things I can see that mark this film/book out as being in the slightest bit different from average TV-movie fare is the completely gratuitous sex scenes.
I'm not the kind of person who says 'I'm no prude but...' BUT The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is like a middle-aged man's nasty sex fantasies mixed with humdrum missing persons case. It even features that most pathetic of porn titillations - the lesbian who only really needs a good man to convert her (and presumably to get her to leave her live-in girlfriend who's completely disposable, of course). By the end, the edgy, rather ugly, punky lesbo Lisbeth is even transformed by a blonde wig, spiky shoes and some golden backlighting. Presumably so that the plain-as-a-potato saggy hero has a PROPER trophy for all his daring journalism. Effing dire.
On top of that it's packed full of clichés and cardboard cut-out characters. The much touted Lisbeth Salander is vaguely interesting until she decides randomly to have sex with the hero - a decision so out of character for a lesbian abuse victim that it would be laughable if it wasn't so insulting.
I couldn't watch this film without thinking of the millions of people who have been conned into thinking they are reading/watching some kind of breakthrough master of crime at work. I also couldn't help thinking that I'm happy Stieg Larsson is dead so he can't profit from his tedious claptrap.
A really unlikeable film, and I despair for the world.