Watchmen… a review
Sometimes it’s something about race.
Sometimes it’s something about religion.
“Watchmen” dares to ask the question “What kind of shrinkage would a naked man experience if he was standing on Mars?”
The answer of course is “I have no idea” because I spent a good chunk of the film staring into the bag of popcorn in my lap whenever the giant blue shlong bounded across the screen.
Why didn’t someone tell me that Harvey Keitel was in this movie?!!
I can tell you this though.
IBM is going to have to change their nickname because you’ll never be able to say “big blue” without giggling like schoolgirl after today.
I can’t tell you have relieved I was that we couldn’t get into the IMAX screening.
The year is 1985, and Nixon is still president of the United States. Superheroes have been outlawed and the world is on the brink of nuclear Armageddon.
One night, one of the ex-superheroes is brutally beaten and tossed from his apartment window to his death.
Since he wore a mask back in the day, no one knows that this is the murder of one of the infamous Watchmen.
Well, no one except for another Watchman that is… a character named “Rorschach”.
Rorschach starts looking up his old colleagues to warn them about the murder of “The Comedian” but no one seems to take him seriously until one day someone tries to kill “Ozymandias”.
Then the gloves are off, and the masks are on.
Unless of course you’re twenty five stories high, and glow with an eerie blue light.
“Dr. Manhattan” (also known as Dirk Diggler) is so powerful that he basically has stopped caring about humanity… and pants.
Sure he could stop the nuclear war but that’s right up there on his things to do like “stopping a spider from eating a fly”.
And yet, for some reason he’s helping the American government create an alternative power source that will bring about world peace.
Um… listen, I’m not here to point out the flaws with the whole “all we need is money” kind of argument to bring about world peace, but correct me if I’m wrong when I point out that people will kill each other over a pair of shoes.
People fight over borders, religion, accents, and in the case of some Hillbillies in Arkansas I think it was all about a pig wasn’t it?
We don’t need an excuse to start fighting, all we need is something to swing.
What Dr. Manhattan needs to do is to make everyone on earth bulletproof.
But hey, who am I to point out the flaws in an overly long semi pornographic comic book based film?
Did I mention length?
Relax ladies…. I’m talking about running time.
This baby clocks in at 162 minutes long.
That’s almost Peter Jackson territory, but at least “King Kong” had the decency to hide his shame (and he was Jonesing for Naomi Watts for most of the flick).
Between the nudity, attempted rapings, dismemberings and cross species gang bangs (oh yes… Mr. Blue can create his own three ways) this is not the kind of movie that you want to take your kids to unless you’re Britney Spears and you’re drunk anyway.
All in all though, I quite liked the film.
If it was about 40 minutes shorter it would have been an outstanding film, and really… did we need to see Mr. Wang for half an hour?!!
Geeze, they convinced Johnny Depp to tone down the gold teeth for his Captain Jack Sparrow character.
Where was the codpiece police when you needed them?
Four out of five stars.
