Laughably bad

Rating: 2/10 (19 May 2004)

Terrible dialogue. Terrible costumes. Portentous acting. Fake-looking CGI FX from beginning to end. Mangling of Homer. Could this mark the downturn of Brad Pitt's career? A real mistake for him. And so expensive.
People in the cinema where I viewed this -- an average, suburban venue -- were laughing out loud at some of the clunker lines. When Paris (Orlando Bloom) suggests he and Helen could live off rabbit and deer "in the east," the audience was in hysterics. And it wasn't because they were so moved.
I thought Cold Mountain was pretty terrible, too, but somehow the acting in it is fun to watch, despite (or maybe because of?) all the melodrama. But here, good acting was simply out of place. Indeed, there was something faintly absurd about Brad Pitt's "sensitive" Achilles.
A real tragedy.