Alexander

Hollywood should not be surprised that this bloated epic was a big budget disaster.

The biggest mistake was the miscasting of Colin Farrell, with his improbably blonded hair, and the laughable notion of an Irishman trying playing a Greek with an English accent. Plus, there is some nudity in the film, and I got to see way more of his male anatomy than I would have ever wanted to see.

Angelina Jolie is appropriately deviant and conniving as his mother.

It is not wholly bad, but whatever is good about the film is not helped by the running back and forth in time. (I refer to the director’s cut; I don’t know if the longer studio cut was any better, and this version doesn’t inspire me to find out.)

Also, what is the point of the film? There is some suggestion that the multiculturalism doesn’t work, but there’s no feeling of admiration about Alexander, or any sense of transcendence about the events of his life. One wonders who at the studio made the determination that a movie about Alexander the Great was a subject Americans would be desperate to see. Contrast that with The Passion, released earlier the same year, which was passed over by every major studio (even with Mel Gibson’s name attached!), probably cost less to make than Alexander, and grossed way more money, and you can see how much Hollywood is out of touch, and why the studios are always saying they never make profits.