Troy? Oy...

Rating: Null/10 (17 May 2004)

I SO wanted to like this movie, I truly did. But so very much makes that so very impossible...
Brad Pitt, for one thing. Yeah, yeah, he sulked in his tent most Homerically. Just not homoerotically. Poor Patroclus, demoted to cousinly status. Though Briseis gets treated a bit better as a result, so maybe not such a bad thing.
Oh, the much-ballyhooed Pitt torso had its moments, for sure. What a pity that the face, the line readings, the flat California voice and the acting ability didn't measure up in buffness... After a while I was beseeching the gods, any gods, to step in and end my suffering.
Not to mention the vast liberties taken with canon. (Though, after Peter Jackson, why are we not surprised?) Hey, won't Clytemnestra and Orestes and the rest of the family be in for a shock, though! And there was a nice little Sir Thomas Malory/end of "Camelot" moment with this kid Aeneas and a sword...
Still, Eric Bana eminently watchable, O'Toole quaveringly scenery-devouring, Julie Christie I didn't even recognize till the credits. Which revealed a number of other nice surprises: John Shrapnel, Nigel Terry, Julian Glover.
And what's with the apparently eccentric pronunciations of people's names? I've been reading all this stuff for years, not to mention attending productions of "Hamlet", and never before have I heard PREE-am, PAT-roclus or Me-ne-LOUSE for PRY-am, Pa-TRO-clus and Me-ne-LAY-us. Praps Shakespearean me has been saying 'em wrong all these years. Well, that'll teach me to listen to Derek Jacobi and Ken Branagh..
So call me a petulant classicist, then, and not just for that reason alone.I'm going to go sulk in MY tent now...