So What! And why did bother?

Rating: 3/10 (11 March 2009)

160 minutes of fairly shallow, CGI-dominated, at times tediously boring, fare that is supposed to be packed with meaning, deep themes, and action-plus. Forget it - this is another comic book adaptation that takes itself and its material far too seriously. Underpinning it is an interesting thought - what happens when superheroes are forced to retire? Answer they miss the buzz of kicking a**, and when they return to it again, it turns them on like sex, and for real sex too! Wow, it's just like a Fellini movie! A more interesting question, which us oldies who remember comics in the fifties before they were banned for some years in the UK as 'penny dreadfuls,' is why didn't Superman defeat Hitler and Japan in WW2? The question is asked in this film - Nixon (plus false nose) asks Doc Manhattan (Superman) to intervene in Vietnam, and he says 'yes', mopping up the NVA and Viet Cong in a week, with no qualms or explanation! But later on, after a crisis of conscience, he can't be bothered to stop a nuclear holocaust! And lo, the prolonged tedious tortured path to get from one point to the other - supposedly deep and questioning and meaningful - is absolutely boring and extremely shallow. This is a graphic novel/Hollywood movie not 'King Lear.' So any claims of deep interesting material in this film are rubbish. And as for characterisation, feeble and been done many times before in other shoddy comic book adaptations. For example sexy Silk Spectre 2 (doubling for Lois Lane and looking like a young Xena the Warrior) is upset because the blue genie (Doc Manhattan) - and, yes, he repeats a scene from the pre-war 'Arabian Nights' movie when he reaches inside a building for a normal-sized superhero - splits off a couple of replicants of himself when he is busy with nuclear fusion to pleasure her. So she moves on to the Batman substitute, who is more human if rather nerdy (cue the younger male audience for Rogen, Stiller, Wilson rubbish movies and their female fantasies) for comfort and one of the more believable sex scenes of recent times (it's been dubbed porno of course by the serious minded politically correct comic book moviegoer). And Malin Ackerman is worth an ogle if a little under-cantilevered with her kit off! Plot is complicated (read other comments if you want a summary), and not helped by hurried and garbled explanations of what is going on, particularly at the end, which is awful in its' disdain for the audience - almost like 'you got enough action and sex, didn't you, so who cares if the plotting is a bit dodgy and you missed bits.' The alternative 1985 is rushed and not quite believable. The nuclear bust up again is too rushed and does not work. Take it from me, I lived through the Cuban Missile crisis, and it felt somewhat more real than a Spitting Image Richard Nixon saying 'Go to DefCon 1.' The character of Rorschach is just an excuse for some ultraviolent, but gradually dimishing return, action that graphic novels seem to be steeped in - but they are drawings and not real! So when is Hollywood going to do animated graphic novels like anime, rather than spending vast fortunes on these very ordinary pictures that just use CGI to make up for quality and illustrate fairly minor points in the storyline? And it has to be said Americans will not like this portrayal of themselves in the Obama-era. That is a past that resides in the Seventies and Eighties rather than the hopeful end of the naughties which features Guantanamo Bay, Extreme Rendition, and bringing freedom and democracy to 100,000 dead Iraqis! Please can we have some well written and profoundly observed movies about now and the past that are not based on the shallow inanities of comic books. Leave that to TV and shows like Ben10 and the Justice League of America!