Very Little To Offer

Rating: 3/10 (4 November 2012)

Here's how the arguments go for liking this movie go: The Godfather is a great movie because it's a hallmark of the genre. While gangster movies before this had been wall-to-wall violence and only loosely strung together by a plot, The Godfather was able to move away from that tradition by having a plot-heavy mobster movie. The performances were all superb and the characters all felt real.
However, what this argument fails to recognize is that the plot moves at such a slow pace that it's difficult to give a damn about it. This is quite honestly the slowest paced movie I've ever seen, and it would have been improved a thousand-fold if an hour or so had been cut. It's not that I hate slow movies--a slow pacing can work brilliantly--but The Godfather? No, it doesn't do it.
As for the cast and performances, they're really not all they're cracked up to be. If indecipherable mumbling is your thing, so be it, and in that case, this movie is the best thing ever. In reality, though, half-mumbled lines don't really do anything for me, and because of that; all the characters seemed to be fairly one-dimensional as a result.
I can see how you could like this movie. On a technical level, it did move away from the traditional three-point lighting which was common in earlier films, and the plot was definitely something other than what had been dealt with in mobster movies before then. But the content of the plot was somewhat devoid of any real interest--or at least it was for me--and the characters came off as being one-dimensional as a result.