When is the good part coming?

Rating: 1/10 (20 March 2009)

I have never read any comic or graphic novel, yet I have been able to enjoy quite a few movies that were derived from them. This was certainly not the case for Watchmen. Half way through I was left wondering when the good stuff would finally start coming.
Maybe you might have some pre-existing attachment to the characters if you have read the books, but if the movie is all you have, the characters are one-dimensional, dull and unattractive. The Comedian is the only one I loved straight away but he dies within 5 minutes. Rorschach is the next best thing but doesn't get enough focus to really capture my heart. The way he is discarded at the end, made me wonder if really he was of any importance. The strength of his character is too strongly diluted by the bad scenes of the Silk Spectre II and Nite Owl II that continuously interrupt the flow. Silk Spectre II was horrible. She seems to have no emotions whatsoever. All she does is have sex with the guys without too much of a pause between them. The fact that the Comedian is her father might have been expected to give her more depth but hardly seems to faze her. Instead the 5 seconds of poorly acted sobbing followed by immediate reconciliation makes it seem like it's no big deal whatsoever. Nite Owl II is a geek devoid of passion and lacking a backbone. He's the kind of classmate who's name you wouldn't remember after 1 year. Dr. Manhattan serves no purpose other than being the eventual deus ex machina that solves everything, making the efforts of all the other heroes look totally stupid and pedestrian. He's disconnected from the world and is typically not the kind of character a viewer would connect with. The bad guy, Ozzy, gets hardly any background or an explanation why he's both smarter than everyone and able to beat up on the Comedian, Nite Owl II, Rorschach and the Silk Spectre II. Or why he can catch speeding bullets... The movie spends a whole lot of time on flashbacks that take out the whole momentum of the plot. Yet, despite all those flashbacks, it does not manage to make me feel connected to any of the characters. This is the main weakness to me.
The songs were nice individually but many times seemed wrong for the scene. It's one of the first times the soundtrack really bothered me in a movie, which says a lot. The CGI was too obvious and in some cases obnoxious and overdone, giving no serious added value. Of course they were breathtaking at times but they were awful at other times. I was looking for a dark movie with corrupted morals and realistic heroes who are not perfect. Only Rorschach brings this to the movie. Slow motion fight scenes, open-bone fractures and blood splattering around just made me sigh. There was no x-factor in any of this. No Sin City effect, no 300 adrenaline pace, no Dark Knight madness, nothing. Part of the reason why so many of the fight scenes couldn't interest me is because they occur in subplots or suddenly pop up in the main plot unexpected.
As a movie, it failed for me. This says nothing about the graphic novel, which I might one day buy to find out what the characters are really about. They sacrificed momentum and continuity in the main plot to narrate partial backgrounds on too many characters. Often times it's hard to connect your audience to 1 or 2 characters. If you're trying to make them care about 5 or 6 of them, you're bound to fail, especially with mediocre or boring acting. This is why it was probably a hard task to make a movie from this graphic novel.