Dissing Alexander

Saw two movies over the T-day weekend: The Incredibles and Alexander. The Incredibles was as good as everyone says, but Alexander was even worse than the reviews have let on. I knew it was going to be bad, I went for the cinematography. But that bad? What the h*ll was Oliver Stone thinking?



*************Spoiler Alert***************



He did okay for the first half hour, showing scenes from youn

g Alexander's life. Angelina's accent was a little ridiculous, something between Russian and Spanish, but I could fob it off on an attempt to seem barbarian-like. The first major boo-boo came after a confrontation scene between the teenage Alexander and his father. Alexander is banished after making a crack about his father's drinking - actually true, from what I've read in the history books. Suddenly we get an "eight years later" screen and Alexander is leading 40,000 men against 250,000 Persians at the Battle of Gaugamela, which Hopkin's voice-over tells us is the "most important" battle of Alexander's life. Oh really? Why? And how the heck did he get in charge of the army? Last we knew he was hitch-hiking out of Babylon with the clothes on his back.



There are probably four more time cuts. It got so bad I was whispering things like "Three years, two days, and sixteen hours later" when scenes changed. (Not loud, and no one was sitting near us. I'm not one of those people.)



Then there were the silly accents. Jolie's was believable compared to some of the soldier's. Really, now, a scottish/irish brogue? From a Macedonian? Was there zero dramiturgical assistance in this film?



Then came the "one battle too many" scene, in which Alexander loses a lot of people, is wounded, and decides maybe war ain't so fun after all. It's Alexander on his favorite horse, which has miraculously been kept in tip-top condition for the past twenty years or so, against an Indian leader on an elephant. The two animals face each other and rear up in an image way too reminiscent of the battle between Scar and Simba in The Lion King. At least they laid off the red imaging for that scene, or it would have been a dead ringer.



The final straw for me was the death of Hephaistion. A dying Hephaistion is lying on the bed, Alexander is brought into him. It's supposed to be a touching scene. So what does the script have Hephaistion say, in a weak, scratchy voice? "I'm getting better." Did no one involved with this movie ever see the Holy Grail? I had to bite my tongue to keep from shouting "I think I'll go for a walk."



Yikes.



This would make good fodder for an MST3K episode, but really not much more.