ViewGuide

Created Mar 15, 2009 01:43PM PST • Edited Jan 08, 2012 03:08AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   OK 2.5

   It’s a big movie with a lot on its mind: Mostly that heroes are often seriously flawed and therefore institutions are intrinsically untrustworthy. But also that five out of six superheros are men, and the token female must dress as a dominatrix – with a bad costume in the case of Watchmen’s Silk Spectre II.

   Watchmen plays as the evil twin of The Incredibles: has-been superheros get enticed back into action to save the world. While the ambitions are much higher here than in Pixar’s light entertainment, the deeper messages are disappointing: less mature, more adolescent. This makes the movie – while never uninteresting – as much a slog as an entertainment.

4. Acting

   Very Good 3.5

   Jackie Earl Haley gives the movie’s one outstanding performance as Rorschach. This guy plays edgy freaks as well as they’ve ever been played, e.g., his devious child molester in Little Children.

   Patrick Wilson, Haley’s fellow Little Children star, delivers his patented diffident nice guy shtick. Given that he’s got the best costume, is a studly avenger, has the hottest ride and a super-hot superhero girlfriend, what’s there to be diffident about? Man up Dude.

   Carla Guigino, great in a role that could easily have dipped into parody, demonstrates real range to go with her mature sex appeal.

   Malin Ackerman disappoints as the token female superhero. Notwithstanding the striking impression she makes in her spiked heels and unflattering vinyl costume, her wooden line readings are damn near Keanu-esque: Her face barely moves, marking her as more model than performer. Fortunately much of her screen time consists of getting fondled and fucked by her disappointing superhero lovers. The Blue Man Group-sex scene was particularly amusing. Nice to see that proto-deities don’t understand women any better than we mortal men.

   Jeffery Dean Morgan, looking like an American Javier Bardem, delivers a manly performance as the repellent Comedian. This actor deserves more roles.

   Mathew Goode plays way too fey for my taste, but it did suit his role as “the smartest man in the world.”

   Billy Crudup has barely any screen time in normal guise, and made little impression when he was on screen. His huge Blue Man, OTOH, was both overwhelming and overly passive. Take a stand dude!

5. Male Stars Very Good 3.5

6. Female Stars Very Good 3.5

7. Female Costars Very Good 3.5

8. Male Costars Very Good 3.5

10. Film

    OK 2.5

    Adolescently self-serious, supernaturally inconsistent, and visually hit-or-miss, Watchmen compares unfavorably to recent comik benchmarks like The Dark Knight and Iron Man.

11. Direction Very Good 3.5

12. Play Pretty Bad 1.5

    “Do you think I am a comic book villain?” demands the demented genius dressed as a gay Roman god.

    Yes. Yes, I do.

    Do I think your irony worked? No. No, I don’t.

    Much has been written about how Watchmen was first to show superheros with flawed inner lives, away from the cowl and cape. I’m no comik scholar, but it seems more accurate to observe that Watchmen are the first DC superheros made more interesting primarily because of their flaws, even if Watchmen isn’t typical DC fare. Marvel, OTOH, has always traded in flawed, worrywart heroes: Spidey and Thing to name two. Sure they’re not baby killers or anything heinous like that, but they damn well have ISSUES.

13. Music Really Great 4.5

    A regular highlight is the movie’s real commitment to a variety of great songs: Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Simon & Garfunkel, to name a few.

    From Bob we get a never more powerful rendition of The Times They Are A’Changin sung by the minstrel himself, and then his Desolation Row performed by My Chemical Romance, not to mention Hendrix’s inimitable cover of All Along the Watchtower. Watchtower, Watchmen, maybe some connection there, who knows…

    Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah serves half in jest, which suits me fine since I never liked this or any of his other depressing work.

    For the funeral scene, The Sounds of Silence, a nonpareil vocal performance, so perfect even rockers find themselves singing along.

    99 Luftballons provides a lovely female number, with Nena’s lilting voice always welcome.

14. Visuals Pretty Bad 1.5

    From Silk Spectre II’s unfortunate costume (never would have passed muster on Project Runway), to Dr. Manhattan’s odd glass Martian machine (the Fortress of Solitude it ain’t), the visuals were a big letdown.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Sordid 2.6

    Attempted rape, wanton killing of innocents, war crimes: The movie revels in its indecency.

17. Sex Erotic 2.6

18. Violence Brutal 2.8

19. Rudeness Salty 2.4

21. Reality

    Fantasy 4.2

    Watchmen’s left wing existentialism posits that America required a band of amoral superheroes to stand up to the Soviet Union. The flaws of the Watchmen, some of whom are prone to war crimes, suggests a moral equivalence between the US and the USSR. In short, flawed superhero exceptionalism stands in for authentic American exceptionalism.

    Funny how history played differently: Ronald Reagan (aided by Maggie Thatcher, Lech Walesa and John Paul II) defeated Soviet Socialism with nary a ripple in the space-time continuum. Guess that makes them real life Watchmen, sans the moral tarnish. Of course, Watchmen author Alan Moore no doubt believes that the leaders of the Western World were and are covered in moral tarnish, a view never more in vogue than during the Reagan years when Moore wrote Watchmen. To amplify that notion he places the proto-fascist Richard Nixon as the ongoing US President. However, the fact that the Cold War ended with a whimper and not a nuclear holocaust is an inconvenient truth that damages the story’s thesis.

    More practically, Watchmen is far from state-of-the-art in supernatural consistency. While guns and other weapons are often present, most fights conclude via fisticuffs, clearly to heighten the caped crusader drama of the thing. But why stop there? Bring back the BAM, POW, CRASH of the Adam West Batman series.

22. Circumstantial Surreal 2.6

23. Biological Fantasy 5.0

24. Physical Fantasy 5.0

    Conservation of Energy, be gone!