Plastic faces, cliches and disappointment

Rating: 5/10 (28 November 2019)

Let me start of by saying I am a massive fan of the genre, scorcese and all the actors involved. The movie is filled to the brim with incredibly talented actors. So I expected a lot. Maybe too much. It's a scorcese mafia film after all.
So? unfortunately, it is a massive disappointment to me. The first hour especially is absolutely terrible. Like some student film maker tried to copy scorcese and put every cliche of gangster movies in there.
And why is everyone completely ignoring tha godawful CGI/fake faces? The lips and movement was so off that it distracted me the entire time. The uncanny valley was so obvious it hurt my eyes. They even gave them plastic, cgi ears lol. De Niro walks around with a VERY obvious senior body, he cant even stand straight with his arched back etc. So when he pretends to be a young gangster it just looks so weird. The way he walks. The way his face is placed on his head, it sorta looks like a badly photoshopped bobble head...I don't even know how old he was supposed to be early on. Even with the terrible CGI he looked at least 60/70.. just with a plastic face. It was so damn confusing and annoying. Not to mention his obviously senior arms/body etc. I know the story, I know Sheerans age and Hoffa etc but in the movie I was always and constantly confused about their age etc
Then there was the incredibly distracting music constantly. It almost always felt out of place and was so loud it distracted from the conversation going on. This was especially a problem early on during the young de niro scenes. Later on they tone down the loud background music
Then the story, after the first hour it felt like the movie was finally picking off. We got a lot less cgi and more of the story. But then absolutely nothing happens. This is one of the most interesting mobster / union stories out there and they managed to make it boring and eventless.
Everyone seems to love de Niros character Sheeran which makes zero sense to me at all. Pesci (Bufalino) sees him working on a truck and is immediately interested in becoming his friend and helping him. Why would a made man decide this random truck driver is so special? For the rest of the movie Pescis character covers for De Niro with everything and starts to act like de niros older brother. A big change from his usual role as the loveable psycho. Even calls de Niro his son this one time. But I have no idea what the age difference is supposed to be between the two. Aside from starting to "paint houses", which he does later on, there is no reason for De Niro to be so well respected and loved by everyone. They never show why he is so popular..
Pacino did some of the best acting in the show. But even with him they could have used another actor for Hoffa
Listen I love it when a movie is long. Give me a movie that's 4 to 6 hours I still won't complain, the longer the better to me. But with this movie, I don't understand what happened to the time. They have 3 and a half hours to tell this story and they spend 20 minutes max with the actual story of Hoffa, the rest was just empty filler.
After what happens to Hoffa (I mean is that even spoilable?) There is an full half hour of absolutely nothing. We have de Niro acting all sad about his daughter refusing to talk to him. It's never made clear why she hates him so much. Ok so she reads about dad in the papers, kids don't care about that. They dont fear their parents because others say so. They hate their parents because of how their parents are. But the film shows us none of that despite really focusing on that relationship extensively.
I wish they had picked another actor for De Niros role. He is too old. The cgi was extremely distracting and left a very bad taste in my mouth for the rest of the movie. Even the way "young" de niro walked drove me crazy.. his young scenes annoyed me so damn much. It was never clear how old he was and he always looked very old so it was very jarring that they were suddenly in the past, then the future then the past again etc. CGI De Niro not only looks plastic, he looks like a hunchback trying to walk straight. Like someone put a coat hanger on the back of his jacket and there is a crane raising him from the ground to make him appear to stand straight.
In the end this movie is one of the biggest disappointments ever to me. They took the most fascinating story and made it boring and nonsensical. I can't believe they took a story this great, used all the best actors and had the best mafia movie filmmaker and still turned it into such a massive mess.
Truly a shame. And the critics and others reviewing it so highly makes me question the legitimacy of many of the reviews here. I get the critics being pretentious. But the audience isn't swayed as easily usually. Maybe they're all in some sort of collective denial.
In the end you have a decent movie with terrible CGI, some great acting and some acting ruined by CGI, super old men pretending to be youngsters, a decent story that we barely get to see. An anti climactic ending. This could have been the movie of the decade. Instead it's a forgettable flick with tons of major names attached to it. A decade from.now people will still be talking about goodfellas but I doubt anyone will talk about this movie..
The only way they can save this movie and make it watchable in the future is to fix the disgustingly bad CGI and tone down the annoying music. If they have some scenes flushing out the relationship between Frank Sheeran (de niro) his daughter, Bufalino (pesci) and Hoffa (pacino) that would give a lot.more perspective. From watching the movie there is nothing that explains why both Bufalino and Hoffa are so enamoured by this Irish hitman. I am not sure but I guess sheeran played a big role on the story, which might explain why everyone loves him and respects him so much. Why his daughter hates him for no good reason other than his life as a hitman (if his daughter hates him in real life I imagine he did a lot more to his family than just being a hitman for a job). I mean, at one point Hoffa is calling his people all kinds of names, while yelling etc. Then Sheeran/pacino is offended and walks out, only for Hoffa to run after him to tell him how much he loves him and how he wasn't talking to him, how he would never disrespect him like that. In another scene there is this guy who is introducing Sheeran to Hoffa and the guy is like "omg, this Sheeran guy is the best, a natural leader, everyone loves him, I'd let him.have my wife if he wanted!!".
It also needed more plot. a bit of drama. It needed for things to happen not just the murder of one or two random people that we saw for 2 minutes on screen.
Anyway I can rant on for hours..I was so excited for this. I guess the hype and expectations made the disappointment a lot worse.