The Worst Movie I Have Ever Seen...

Rating: 1/10 (14 January 2014)

The title of my review says it all. The Wolf of Wall Street was literally the WORST movie I have seen in my entire life. My opinion might not be quite so negative if the movie hadn't dragged its disorganized, rambling plot on for THREE WHOLE HOURS. At about the one hour mark I was already checking the clock out of boredom and disinterest, and continued to do so throughout the rest of the movie.
I appreciate good film-making, and I appreciate that Martin Scorsese is widely recognized as a film genius, but I think this one was an artistic flop. The movie starts off entertaining, but it never really feels like the film takes off. Instead, I felt as if the film was rambling, always promising to find the point where the action gets good, but never quite getting there. The pacing is slower than molasses, and the dialogue inundated with largely meaningless conversations consisting mainly of expletives. While the movie focuses on Jordan Belfort's (DiCaprio) addictions to money, sex, and drugs, we never see Belfort hit rock bottom as we would usually expect of such a movie. Nor does the movie glorify his addictions, so the audience is left merely absorbing the gamut of his largely taboo experience without any meaning or particular point to it. The nudity in this film, too, is needlessly gratuitous and seemingly serves no purpose other than to continuously drive the point to the audience that Belfort is an uncommonly selfish ass who enjoys the sexual underbelly of the underworld -- a point which could have been made just as effectively with about half the nudity and sexual scenes.
Throughout the film we see none of the characters grow, nor do we see their actions have any other consequence besides generating more money, aside from Belfort's divorce and imprisonment at the end of the film, which seem to carry absolutely no weight. The characters are flat and shallow -- not the kind of people you would want to spend three hours with. DiCaprio's performance as Belfort was strong and believable, although the character was so thoroughly unlikable that it was difficult to enjoy his performance. Jonah Hill also gave a solid performance, but again, the character was too unlikable for me to care.
Scorsese also used little visual and narrative tricks (such as slowing the film down to focus on a ticking clock flying through the air, or having DiCaprio narrate Belfort's thoughts) to break up the flow of the story that, had they been used more consistently, more frequently, or in conjunction with any sort of meaning, would have had a positive stylistic impact on the film, but their usage was sporadic, giving the film a disjointed and uneven feeling.
I will be sorely disappointed if the academy nominates this film for best picture, as it felt more like an unedited rough draft that was prematurely loosed on theater-goers rather than a carefully constructed, polished piece of cinema.