I can't figure out why I didn't like it

Rating: 4/10 (8 May 2014)

Watchmen, the graphic novel, was dark, brutal, and frequently thrilling.
Watchmen, the movie, is dark, brutal, and ultimately flat and boring.
For the life of me, I can't figure out why I feel this way. On a surface level this film seems to have done everything (well, almost everything) it could to be faithful to the universe Moore and Gibbons created. Obviously, a lot of people worked very hard to make this movie what it is.
Perhaps it's the fact that none of the actors (with the exception of Jackie Earle Haley, pitch-perfect as Rorschach) seem to be doing very much. In their defense, it must be hard to breathe much life into these characters: who, for example, can find a connection with and breathe life into a god-like glowing blue guy, one of whose chief qualities is that he's feeling disconnected from humanity? I don't know, I confess.
Still, they should have (says the former actor) found some way to do it ... and only one of them (Haley) did.
I also have an irrational dislike of Patrick Wilson ... so that limits my appreciation of any film with him in it.
As has become cliché: the book was so much better. Sigh.