Paul Thomas Anderson's huge disappointment

Rating: 1/10 (24 February 2008)

I feel duped by the reviews of this movie and that 2.5 hours of my life were wasted. I now know not to trust movie critics. How can so many people give this move 10 stars? How can this movie be in the top 25 movies of all time? I am baffled. I have been literally angry that I wasted my time, and that this movie is so highly rated. I understood from the reviews that this movie would be nothing like Magnolia or Boogie Nights, but at least expected a captivating movie with an interesting plot given Paul Thomas Anderson's other triumphs and the raving reviews from other users and film critics. If you like Paul Thomas Anderson's other movies, don't think for a second you will like this movie. Apparently a lot of people do, so maybe you will be one of them, but many of you will hate it. One of the greatest things about his other movies (specifically Magnolia) is that, even though many of the characters are "bad people", the characters and the story line are developed so well that the movie elicits an emotional roller coaster...you feel disdain for some characters, then you feel sorry for the characters, and even feel compassion for those same characters at other points in the movie. The only emotion I felt in this movie was disgust and hatred for the main character, and no emotion for any of the other characters which were few.
The movie was so damn boring I almost fell asleep several times during the movie. I understood why this director's other movies were so long...the plots were so intricate that they required that much time to play out. This movie is plagued by an editing crisis. There was enough plot in this movie for about one - 1.5 hours of movie. At least if there is going to be such a lame plot, the movie could have some character development. There was only one character really, and I kept wondering when they were going to explain why he was such a hateful human being, give us some glimpse into the main character's lack of a heart, the slightest granule of a background or if he even had a childhood, but nothing ever came! Just a VERY drawn out sequence of events and acts of immorality that I had no compassion for, because I didn't know or care about any of the other characters. For the main character there was absolutely nothing to feel except contempt...I didn't feel sorry for, compassion for, empathy or understanding for the main character. So at the end of the movie, after waiting for a revelation of the point of the movie, it never came. I sat there wondering if all these people were crazy who had reviewed it, and if the film critics were paid bribes to give this film the ratings it was given. The acting was pretty good, although like many others it's pretty apparent that Daniel Day Lewis overacted this part. I guess it was the screen play and editing that really made this movie suffer. Paul Thomas Anderson's newest work is a disappointment, a waste of almost 3 hours, and a complete ruin of a coveted Saturday night.