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People say things like “this is the
worst movie I have ever seen” with such frequency that it is easy to stop taking them seriously. If someone tells you that Alexander is the worst movie that they have ever seen, believe them, they are
not lying. This movie is over three hours of your life that you will never get
back and all that it leaves behind is a bad taste in your mouth. Unless you are
the rare soul, like me, who thrives on the sweet nectar of failure, you must avoid this movie like the plague. I don’t think I can say it enough, this movie is bad, and it’s the most ambitiously bad film
I have ever seen. Endless walking, endless gazing, endless folk dancing, endless
monologues from Alexander. There’s actually a great scene later in the
film where a character dies while Alexander is giving yet another laborious speech.
Alexander has his back to him in the foreground, just going on and on, as the guy is in his death spasms in the background,
you think to yourself “lucky bastard” as Alexander just keeps pontificating.
I haven’t even gotten to the accents
yet, this movie is BYOA. Most of the accents are either Irish, British or Scottish
which I know Macedonians spoke Celtic, but ancient Celtic is not the same as modern Irish, so it does come off as lazy.
As for the rest of the cast there are some gems in there as well. Both Alexander’s
father and lover are clearly American. Of course his mother sounds Russian and
his wife (played by Rosario Dawson, I’ll get to her in a moment) has this weird hard to place accent that makes her
say things like “You luff heem?” Are dialect coaches that expensive? I mean why go on and on about how you want to be historically accurate and then skip
something simple like accents (don’t even get me started about the retarded amount of anachronisms in this movie)? Now about Rosario, up until her appearance in the film I though Angelina Jolie was
the most ludicrous thing in the film, well actually she is, but Rosario as Alexander’s wife Roxane gives her a run for
her money. I remember before this movie came out Rosario was on this show talking
about how Oliver Stone talked her into getting naked in this film and how at first she was unsure but then she realized how
important it was for the character because people back then weren’t shy about their bodies. Watching this movie I thought how much must it suck to get naked in a movie for the first time and have
the movie turn out to be one of the worst movies ever made. I mean, if you’re
gonna get naked you want the movie to at least win an Oscar right? Not be an
attempted rape turned slap fight turned growling match turned most ridiculous sex scene ever committed to film.
So,
in conclusion, Alexander, very bad. I know I can be a little elitist when it
comes to historical anything but anybody could see this movie and agree it’s a horrible mistake. It fails on so many levels and though I suggested some heavy editing was needed no amount of editing could
have helped it in the end. Even if you took out all the crap with the eagle and
added another battle and cut 60% of the gazing and added some man on man sex and cut 40% of the walking and all the narration
and added Alexander’s Egyptian campaign (as opposed to skipping right to Persia) and cut out half the rape and added
a little more Bucephalus (the amazing steed who carried Alexander thousands of miles and could be rode by no one but Alexander
whom he named the city of Bucephala for, which could have been a movie in itself) along with cutting at least 30% of the harp
music and/or man-crying; you would still have an awful film with ridiculous accents and over the top performances (with the
exceptions of Jared Leto who did good job with the practically nothing they gave him to do and the other actors who portrayed
Alexander’s circle who acted as though they were in a better film). Your movie has failed if I want the title character
to die so that I can stop watching. When Alexander does finally die it takes
too long and employs yet more over saturated LSD imagery. At the end of the film
Ptolemy turns to his fey scribe and tells him to throw out everything he just said, it’s a shame no one said that
to the screenwriter.
I do however
recommend watching "The Making of Alexander" I watched it on History Channel shortly before this movie was released and it
was very entertaining watching a hard smoking guy like Colin Farell trying to run laps and then puking because he was so out
of shape.
I gotta
do it one more time...
“In my WOMB, I carried my avenger!
AAAARRRRRAAAAAAHHHHHH!!”
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