TheMrLee

While the colorists did an amazing job, the lack of story and over-reliance on slow-motion made this movie one of the most boring I've seen in a long time. Essentially, this movie is a long battle, intercut with pointless back story that is so facile that it provides absolutely no depth to the one-dimensional characters. While the battle initially has some mild entertainment value (although it's a pale imitation of violence in the Matrix), it quickly becomes fatiguing. Unless you enjoy exaggerated blood splatter sounds and seeing limbs cut off for the sake of limbs getting cut off, there isn't much to engage the audience.

The director seems to think audiences don't appreciate the difficulty of fighting human foes, so it pits the Spartans against numerous monsters and hyper large beasts. Yet, with no context and an unending stream of slow-motion violence, the monsters and gigantic beasts don't provide any thrills: they're not scary or menacing. They come, they get killed, they are forgotten.

The movie has other problems, but I fear mentioning them will have readers discount how boring the action is.

While there may be movies that have worse acting, technical

accomplishment, or stories, none of those films have cost as

much or desecrated a cherished childhood memory the way

"Phantom Menace" does. While Lucas has committed many crimes with this film (replacing character and story with CGI, for

one; vaguely veiled derogatory racial stereotypes for another), the

cardinal sin of this film is that is unbearably boring. I suspect

"Cannonball Run" on a worn-out VHS tape would be more involving.

There's a lot to like here, but ultimately this film should have been

an hour shorter. The plot is incredibly repetative: the heroes face

horrible danger, fight their way out, and then barely escape--repeat, repeat, repeat. There is almost no character

development, or for that matter, development of anything other than

thrills. But thrill after thrill eventually gets boring, and two hours in, I

couldn't wait for it to be over.

All is not a loss, however, as the magical environment and special

effects are dazzling and almost succeed at keeping the film going.