Substance saves Style... barely

Rating: 5/10 (8 March 2009)

This comment is written for 3 groups of audiences:
1) To all Zack Snyder (& all MTV-style movie) fans-- still BORED the hell out of me and made me want to quit the movie;
2) To all "Watchmen" (the graphic novel) fans-- LOVED the characters, concepts, etc.-- which totally "saved" the movie for me.
3) To all casual movie audiences-- it might be really good FOR a "Watchmen" adaptation or sci-fi/super-hero movie, but the last time I would go see a movie (or rate it highly) SOLELY for its source material or CGI was more than 10 years ago.
Yes, it's THAT obvious-- "Watchmen" is yet another film where the source material is adapted in a good enough way, WITHOUT making it a good enough film. The pacing is odd, the climaxes are off, blah X 3. I can so understand why some audiences feel "undecided", "meh" or even "torn" about the film.... To Zack Snyder-- "slo-mo/ panning/ etc." alone does not make a scene more exciting/ important/ beautiful/ etc., you need to "set it up" (with directing/ scripting/ acting/ etc.).
So there is only 1 really good thing I can say about this movie-- it made me want to read the graphic novel (which I haven't). Which means it gets a 5/10 (="meh/undecided/torn") from me, which is really for the creators of the graphic novel and not the movie-- because a film should be more than merely an advertisement or detailed "rendering" of its source material.