There's a good rule of thumb for judging movies before you see th em.
Popularity is inversely proportional to the quality of a film.
The more tickets that sell, the more it probably sucks. The aforementioned film did manage to snag the Oscar for Best Picture, but Gladiator has sold a buttload of tickets. It's hard to know where to begin with this Ridley Scott Roman follies mishmash. But there are so many other levels on which they fail miserably that it's hard to chose the main culprit. A good place to start is Russell Crowe, who also managed to snag an Oscar nomination last year, but judging from the performance here, it's hard to see why.