Watchmen

Jesse and I saw "Watchmen" this afternoon and overall I still am not sure what my feelings are. To get things straight to begin with, I love the graphic novel. I think it is a fantastic piece of literature. Now that we got that out of the way. There was both good and bad in the movie.
First off I was planning on doing an 'oscar watch' section on my page but I didn't think I was going to have to start it until about July or August. But my oscar watch has already officially started. Jackie Earle Haley was absolutely brilliant as Rorschach. He embodied that character and brought him straight from the comic onto the screen. I didn't feel like there was any difference in the characters at all. He also does what I will refer to as "almost batman voice." But it's awesome. He understood that there was a fine line between being intimidating and sounding ridiculous. You can understand every word that he says. Don't get me wrong, it is nowhere near as extreme as Christian Bale's stupid batman voice. He just puts some grunge in his voice and I loved it. How this guy fell out of acting for almost fifteen years is beyond me. He is a brilliant actor and that is why he won the Justademy for best supporting actor two years ago. His performance in Little Children is also nothing short of brilliant but once again the academy has a love affair with Alan Arkin and with perverted old men roles. Rorschach is my favorite character in the book and I couldn't have asked for a better portrayal of him onscreen. Absolutely loved him. Jackie Earle Haley in the running early for best supporting actor. Too bad movies like this don't get much credit.
On the other hand Malin Ackerman is a horrible actress. She hurt the movie for me a little bit because she just simply cannot act. She has terrible delivery and even worse is she has absolutely no emotion ever.....at all. She was a terrible choice to play that part but I also am not a fan of her character.
One thing that was really weird for me was when Dr. Manhattan spoke. I knew Billy Crudup was playing him but his voice still took me by surprise. As I read the novel I always pictured him having a much deeper voice, and Billy's just isn't. I wish his voice would have been deeper but that wasn't a big deal at all. Just personal preference, but it has zero bearing on the overall impression of the movie. And they didn't do what I thought they would. They actually showed his penis throughout the movie. There is a whole lot of penis in this movie. I was a little surprised. I also completely dug Jeffrey Dean Morgan's portrayal of the comedian. He was fantastic and portrayed him just how I would have.
Now the thing that bothered me the most about this movie was the music. This has to be the worst use of music I have ever seen in a movie. Seriously. It felt like I was watching a movie and somebody was sitting by me listening to a totally unrelated cd. It drove me nuts. The music didn't fit at all, it made you feel awkward, and it made everything on screen look awkward. I have no idea what Zack Snyder was going for, but it didn't work at all. At all. There were also some terrible decisions made by the director and obviously the editor as well. There were some scenes at certain moments that were horribly directed and looked very clumsy. Mr. Snyder does love his sex scenes and over the top violence, he didn't cheat anybody out of that. The one sex scene between Dreiberg and Laura on the ship is so exaggerated in the movie and semi-pornographic. He did this in 300 as well. But it wasn't all bad, this movie has some of the coolest moments in a movie that I have ever seen. Some actions sequences and the special effects are absolutely brilliant. Overall for me I just felt like the movie lacked the depth and emotion that the novel had. I really felt like Zack Snyder misinterpreted meanings and scenes because he shot some things in a comedic way and portrayed them like they were supposed to be funny and I really don't think that was the intention. Overall after writing this and thinking about the movie for about seven hours now I realized that I enjoyed it. The action sequences are awesome and the movie doesn't fail to entertain. It didn't feel like a 2 hour and 40 minute movie at all. I would give it 3 1/2 out of 5 stars. I would like to know your thoughts on this Chris when you see it, or if you already have.