The title was derived from the phrase, “a day late and a dollar short.” Between work and home life, blog life has been a distant memory. But at least now I can share my thoughts on The Watchmen with all of you who have decided not to see it based on the million other thoughts already published since last Friday. Lucky you!

Let me start by saying I’ve never read Alan Moore’s source material, and I think that allowed me to be a better judge of the film as a standalone piece of work. And what can I say about it? For the first two hours, I thought it was electrifying visually, but thematically it was about as subtile as a 2×4 to the forehead. And that last half hour? Read on…

Every review I’ve read makes mention of the opening credit sequence and the accompanying Bob Dylan tune. I hate that about reviews. Review 101 – explain in detail the first moments of a book, movie, album, to set the tone for the reader. Unfortunately, The Watchmen doesn’t work that way. It plays very much like a serial, and even without being familiar with the comics I could sense where the chapters would begin and end. All that was missing was the chapter cards. And each chapter has its own devices, its own theme, and if the movie followed the source material closely I could tell where over the course of time the comics seem to have lost their way. So that opening sequence? It would have made a great music video, but by no means does it represent the film as a whole.

But about that music. Zack Snyder cleverly used music that we are familiar with as anti-war sentiments, and I think that on whole he made some good creative decisions with its use. Aside from “All Along The Watchtower”, that is,  which has been overused in pretty much every anti-war film ever made.

This was a world which takes place in 1985, and an alternative 1985 as well, in which I had trouble losing myself. See, in a world where superheroes existed since World War II, would we really have a Cold War? Would events have really played out as they did in our world? Would superheroes only exist in America? There wouldn’t be a Vietnam War, there wouldn’t be a Cold War with Russia. Nukes wouldn’t have existed, countries would have bred superheroes as their WMDs. Alan Moore’s alternate reality is implausible, and I don’t care if it was thematically anti-nuclear sentiment from the era when it was originally written. It is very difficult to digest that such an enormous butterfly wouldn’t have caused a bigger change in the course of the future.

Which brings me back to the music. I would have appreciated more anti-war music specific to the ’80s, like Frankie Goes To Hollywood, but again an alternate world would have had very different consequences, and most likely Frankie Goes To Hollywood would never have had the reason to exist – Wham! probably still would be around to ruin our lives, because they never had a reason to begin with. But anyway, my biggest beef is with the source material, of which I am probably in the minority.

And for all those special effects, why did Snyder use the worst makeup jobs in the history of film to convey historical figures? That guy was Nixon? Please. It would have been better if he opted for some Forrest Gump-type effects, using stock footage, voice impersonators and digital effects to create a more realistic and believable future.

Still, I was engaged for those first two hours with the film’s creative plot and representation of its characters. So what killed it for me? That last half hour, which completely squeezed every last bit of enjoyability out of the film for me. All I could think was, “I sat through two hours for this?” It was pure Scoobie nonsense and left favorite characters killed, issues unresolved, and a complete downer of an ending.

Maybe in 1999, that ending would have played a little better. Back then, people were richer, happier, they had jobs, career prospects. America was thriving, on top of the world, and enjoying life. They could afford to be shit on for a few hours knowing they would emerge unscathed and feel a little more thoughtful as individuals. Or at least they had the illusion of being thoughtful, which lasted about as long as a fart in the wind. But in 2009? No way. People are losing their jobs, their homes, their retirement. They are scared. They want their spirits to be elevated. They don’t want to get mind-fucked for three hours and sent out in a world that’s no better off than the one to which they escaped. We need an Iron Man, or another freakin’ Ghostbusters for cryin’ out loud. We didn’t need The Watchmen.

Am I glad I saw it? Yeah, kind of. I now know what The Watchmen is all about, and I’ve absorbed what probably is the most visually stimulating film since Fight Club. Would I recommend it? Hell, I can’t stop telling people how awful it was.

So there you have it. My review.