Overrated, pretentious and utterly disappointing

Rating: 4/10 (31 March 2008)

With There Will Be Blood I was expecting to see something truly epic and memorable. What I actually saw was an excruciatingly long, often boring and not at all memorable let down. It's been a while since I've been in a cinema and people have walked out before the end of the film, but it happened twice during the movie and I wish I'd joined them.
What began as excitement at seeing this film quickly evaporated and turned to mind numbing boredom, inter-spaced with occasional moments of entertainment. However these are few and far between and you'll be left wondering when the story is going to start and your mind is going to be engaged by what's happening on screen. The plot is uninteresting and incredibly slow and nothing seems to connect very well. At the end (if you survive that long) you will be left wondering what the point of it all was as well as what the hell happened and why.
The movie is also accompanied by a truly horrible soundtrack which plays far too often and really grates. Imagine nails chalkboard annoying and you're almost there. The final nail in the coffin but also the one saving grace of the movie is that the serious bits of the film are actually really very funny, but be wary of laughing too loudly because you may annoy the people that are pretending to enjoy the film.
As much as I wanted to love this film, I will always think back on it as being a hugely prententious disappointment and thats a massive shame, especially when you look at all the acclaim it received and in my opinion didn't deserve.