Large order of Snyder, hold the Apocaloctopus

Rating: 5/10 (11 May 2014)

It walks and talks like Watchmen, but somehow this is not Watchmen
Look I'm no defender of Zack Snyder - I'm not sure if he's ever made a good movie at all. But as a distant fan of the original story, against all complaints and bias I really wanted this movie to succeed.
It doesn't.
There are a lot of arguments to be made, the biggest is naturally - Can Watchmen even translate to a movie? The question goes unanswered. If there is a good Watcmen movie to be made, this absolutely is NOT it.
A person could sit down with a checklist as Snyder's Watcmen unfolds and click off all the things from the original story that should be in this movie. Well low and behold, just about everything is in there, of course omitting the Apocalyptic Octopus. Believe it or not, I didn't even mind about the ending, but somehow, it's all pantomime and with the exception of two unquestionably fantastic performances, the end product is utterly soulless and thoroughly vapid.
It's hard to pinpoint what went wrong because the cast is almost there. I really have to applaud most of the players, particularly Haley as Rorschach and Jeffrey Dean Morgan. Unfortunately Malin Akerman and Patrick Wilson aren't up to snuff and I never bought into their characters. Top it off that they are saddled with a laughably terrible sex scene - sure it's "in the book" - but seemingly feels recycled from Snyder's 300 with crappier music.
If I was some great Captain Hindsight, I could point out everything Snyder did wrong. But I can't do it. Just like the graphic novel, this all reads great on paper, but what's on screen is just unbelievably boring and forgettable. Alan Moore created a real allegorical page turner with Watchmen, but on screen, this is just a snoozer.
Is it terrible? No, but there's really no downside to not watching it.