Gods and Generals

Ted Turner, who has lost his fortune, his wife, and his job in recent years, is not going to like the reviews that Gods and Generals, which cost him $90 million of his own money, is getting. A lumpy, three-and-a-half-hour glob of Civil war history, Stephen Holden calls it in the New York Times. Jack Mathews in the New York Daily News comments: Gods and Generals is best thought of as Fights and Blather, and though it wouldn't be any better without the blather, it would be mercifully shorter. To Liam Lacey in the Toronto Globe and Mail, it's a meeting of General Boredom and Major Tedium. Glenn Whipp in the Los Angeles Daily News observes that the movie feels longer than the war itself ... an insufferable experience. Even in Ted Turner's recent hometown of Atlanta, the movie receives mostly negative comments from Atlanta Journal-Constitution critic Eleanor Ringel Gillespie. Although she begins her review by remarking, If you love history -- the Civil war in particular -- you'll want to see Gods and Generals, she completely reverses course half-way through her review: Now, for the non-buffs. At times, the film can feel like a historical pageant, stiff and heavy-handed. Some scenes feel as if they've been inserted for the sole purpose of having [General Robert E.] Lee ride up and utter something famous.