Who watches their watch during a movie?

Rating: 3/10 (7 March 2009)

"Who watches the 'Watchmen'?" I'm sure a couple of hundred of thousands will the first week. Maybe a few more when the 'Watchmen' gets released in a few months on DVD. Between that time, I doubt many will.
It's got the unfortunate (about) 3 hour time frame (and believe me, you'll feel every minute of those 163 minutes) and the "not-for-kids"/hard R superhero movie violence, profanity and nudity against it. Whereas 'The Dark Knight' was probably the most adult, real-life super-hero movie, 'Watchmen' really, really wants to be an adult super-hero movie. Almost like a 13-year-old comic book-geek wishing he was older.
Visually stunning in some scenes, enormously graphic in others, 'Watchmen' isn't a terrible movie; it just simply tries too hard. Maybe it tried too hard to put all of its source material in the stand-alone film. Granted, I never read the original comics/graphic novel, so this is all from an outside POV. But I see now why 'Stephen King's The Stand' made its way to the small screen instead. (And I did read that original novel.) Basically, 'Watchmen' disguises itself as film noir, setting itself all over the place from the 1940s to present day/alternate 1985 (reminds me of another alternate 1985 in 'Back to the Future Part II,' as did their version of multiple-elected Nixon reminded me of older Biff in the same film. This absolutely made me laugh whenever Nixon was on the screen. I'm not sure if that was intended, but it certainly was distracting.) Half the time, I had a hard time keeping up with past, future, most recent past; I finally gave up, reminding myself to sort it out later.
It's really just a mystery of who's killing off the superheroes and why. Unfortunately, it starts off that way, and then you almost have to wait the other 150 minutes or so to get back to the plot A. Plots B, C, D, etc are almost forgettable and at times slow. Sure, they seemed to know when it was slow, as they immediately threw in someone getting chopped, sliced, and murdered with a loud action sequence.
I liked the visuals, the style and a multiple super-hero movie with characters they either did explain how they became super-human, or simply left as a mystery. The not knowing sometimes was even better. However, this is the same fear I have for the long-delayed 'Justice League' movie: 12 or so origin-stories, a 12-hour movie makes. I certainly couldn't take even 15 more minutes in this film to figure out how one character's mask shifts.
And I did like two of the characters: The Comedian and Rorschach (though when behind the ink, or eventually unmasked, is dead-on for a young Clint Eastwood.) Their interesting presence actually made me sit up and pay attention.
Unfortunately, the movie had to deal with other characters. Some so laughable, we ended back up with the mind of the 13-year-old nerd who thought these up when doodling during History class.
We had the world's smartest man, who never said one intelligent thing or had any sort of a brilliant idea. We had a girl in spandex (tell me she wasn't thought up by a 13-year-old boy) who's main powers are, well, uh, dressing nice, slow-mo hair and some karate from the movies. We had a dumbed-down Iron Man/Batman who was about as interesting as pocket lent.
And finally, we have Dr. Manhattan. A very, very naked Dr. Manhattan. Though this didn't offend me and I absolutely appreciated this adaptation wasn't trying to shield its audience dropping its level to PG-13 status. But, come-on, I haven't seen this much full frontal male nudity since, well, never in the theater. When I saw 'Forgetting Sarah Marshall,' I definitively heard the male audience wince at the roughly 12-seconds (in the entire film) of Jason Segel's penis. I can't wait to hear the fanboy's reaction to male genitalia roughly every 4-5 scenes.
But enough about his smurf-blue penis. His character was mildly interesting, but what frustrated me about 'Lord of the Rings' is the same in 'Watchmen.' Whenever there's a character with basically omnipotent power, the solution to solving all of Earth's (or Middle Earth's) problems seems so clear and no one seems to want or thinks to use such power. How about wiping out the Earth's nuclear bombs with a single thought (or just blinking that ring to that volcano)? Yes, I realize there's a lot of "learning" to do and it would end up as a 15-minute short film given my solution. But given I have little patience, a 3 hour (or 9 with 'Rings') movie probably wasn't suited for me anyways.
The music was loud, overbearing and too much of an 80s homage. The dialogue, at times, was hilariously bad. And when the twist is revealed in the closing, I almost laughed (again, probably unintentionally) on how everyone went on as if nothing happened.
'Watchmen' is worth a watch, but I should've just wanted the couple of months for DVD. I certainly needed several breaks. Heck, even 'Lord of the Rings' let a year pass between "learning" sessions so you can recoup.