Hard to find a redeeming element in this...

Rating: 5/10 (16 May 2008)

So many reviews here have called this 'there will be drivel/sleep/nothing/****..." and they are right.
First of all, I don't watch movies to be entertained all the time. And movies don't have to be short. One of my favorite films is Dogville which is over 3 hours long and cannot be called entertaining unless you're a sociopath. But that movie gave me something, made me think, feel, cry, provided anger, redemption, a dark meditation on human condition and much much more...
This movie however, just... What does it give me? If this is about Daniel Plainview, why is it we never understand where this guy is coming from? Is he evil, crazy, alcoholic, competitive... Frankly we don't care.
What little dialogue there is is insipid. Characters are flat, plot is completely missing from the picture for lengthy periods. Was this even edited at all?
If this is a commentary on greed and power and the interplay of big money and religion and whatnot, then it's a very very poor attempt at that too. Those points could have been made with this script and basic elements but TWBB fails in this regard too.
Now everyone gushing about the acting. There were moments, yes. I loved the scene where DP drunkenly yells "JJJJJJJJ Yes!" for example. But much of it was staring at stuff and tobacco- related activities that do not develop the character one bit. As for the Eli character, in another movie, the over the top teenage looking crazed pastor could have given a dark, neurotic and bizarre tone to the movie but it just seemed "off". Was Dano miscast? Probably but that's not all. It's just that the movie failed to gel in so many ways that I doubt anything could have been done..
The score was interesting but out of sync with the narrative (or lack thereof) for most of the movie.
What a failure of a movie... I cannot recommend this movie to anyone and fail to understand why people are rating this so positively. I can only guess it's a case of the emperor's new clothes.
There is one thing I do like about this movie: That Paul Thomas Anderson has made a better movie with Adam Sandler as the lead actor than with Daniel Day Lewis... That's one thing I bet few movie viewers would expect, yet it is true. It's a strange world.