The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

On ABC's Good Morning America critic Joel Siegel led off his review of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by remarking on the extraordinary acting talent of one of its stars, Sean Connery. I'd pay to watch him read the morning paper and drink a cup of coffee, Siegel commented, then added: I'd rather do [that] than watch The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which Siegel described as every action movie this summer lumped together in one big ... lump. His colleagues in the print media mostly agree. Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times calls the lump a mixture of incomprehensible action, idiotic dialogue, inexplicable motivations, causes without effects, effects without causes, and general lunacy. What a mess. Geoff Pevere in the Toronto Star advises: Transpose just about any of the reasonable complaints one might have about 90 per cent of the big budget studio releases currently, recently or imminently in release (i.e., that they're underwritten, overblown, forgettable, illogical, irrelevant, intellectually-challenged and yet eager to reproduce) and you've pretty much captured the essence of this joyless, lurching behemoth. Megan Lehmann in the New York Post counters the highfalutin title with a highfalutin description: unfathomable balderdash. Carrie Rickey in the Philadelphia Inquirer describes it as the unwatchable in pursuit of the inexplicable. Stephen Hunter in the Washington Post even has rancorous words about Connery. He confines most of his acting to his left eyebrow and his right fist; they're his only body parts that seem engaged. In all other respects, his performance must be modeled on Darrell Hammond's brilliant impersonations of him on Saturday Night Live as arrogant and stupid but also stubborn and boring, Hunter writes. And Manohla Dargis in the Los Angeles Times expresses her exasperation with the recent glut of blockbuster action films by kicking off her review this way: It's axiomatic among film critics that the movies have gone to the dogs, or more precisely to teenage boys. Given the current crop of cheerlessly noisy entertainments, such bitterness is understandable, but then again it's summer. Summer is the critics' season of discontent, the time when movies seem coarser, louder and held hostage by stories simple enough to wrap around a slab of Bazooka bubble gum. In fact, the film has a few admirers. Eleanor Ringel Gillespie in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution describes it as a lightning-paced period adventure, dotted with some off-hand literary references to coax a smile out of book-loving moviegoers.