CHICAGO - MOVIE REVIEWS THE SPIRIT

MOVIE REVIEWS THE SPIRIT

The Spirit , based on the Will Eisner comic book, has got into the spirit of the season by allowing critics to burst forth in all their bah-humbug glory. Consider how much Roger Ebert must have reveled in writing his opening paragraph in the Chicago Sun-Times. " The Spirit is mannered to the point of madness. There is not a trace of human emotion in it. To call the characters cardboard is to insult a useful packing material. The movie is all style -- style without substance, style whirling in a senseless void." Here are a few other descriptions of the movie "Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer "Hard boiled and half-baked;" Jason Anderson, the Toronto Star "a desperate, offensive and thoroughly misguided travesty;" Elizabeth Weitzman in the New York Daily News "one of the worst movies of the year." And then there's A.O. Scott's take on the movie "What is most striking about The Spirit ," he writes, "is how little pleasure it affords." Finally, Carina Chocano, who was recently let go by the Los Angeles Times , turns up as a reviewer for the Washington Post . Her conclusion "Good comic books suggest action through abstraction, but The Spirit plays like an overproduced diorama. Watching it is like watching three dimensions trying to pass themselves off as two.

25/12/2008