A sampling of the bad press garnered so far:
The few trailer clips I've seen confirmed my view that you can smell the odor of a bad movie coming off the screen. A cast of C- and D-list actors who'd be hard pressed to get work on a PSA these days spewing horribly turgid and ludicrous dialogue, a "heroine" who looks like she does the stuff when she's not spewing philosobabble, and a cinematic style that is at least fifty years out of date. It looked and felt like a disaster in the works and that was just from the trailer. And it won't even have the merciful brevity of the 1949 movie of The Fountainhead which starred actual name actors like Gary Cooper, Patricia Neal and Raymond Massey and was directed by Hollywood heavyweight King Vidor and that film was ridiculous even for its time.Rand Appalling: New 'Atlas Shrugged' Movie Booed Off Planet
Greg Mitchell | April 14, 2011
It takes a lot to get a 0% at the mass market critics' consensus site Rotten Tomatoes. Pick an awful movie you can think of and it probably managed a 5% or maybe even a 25%. Somehow, Atlas Shrugged, Part I (yes! more to look forward to!), which opens Friday, has at this writing achieved the rare feat.
In other words, not a single critic to date, from major and minor outlet, high or lowest of low of lowbrow, likes it one bit. I like the headline over the Chicago Tribune review: "Taxing Indeed." Still waiting for "Don't Go (Galt) There." Or "Born Under a Bad Ayn."
Here's a sampling of commentary:
Carrie Rickey, Philadelphia Inquirer: "Atlas Shrugged. I arched eyebrow, scrunched forehead, yawned."
Roger Ebert: "The most anticlimactic non-event since Geraldo Rivera broke into Al Capone’s vault. I suspect only someone very familiar with Rand’s 1957 novel could understand the film at all, and I doubt they will be happy with it. For the rest of us, it involves a series of business meetings in luxurious retro leather-and-brass board rooms and offices, and restaurants and bedrooms that look borrowed from a hotel no doubt known as the Robber Baron Arms."
Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: "The book was published in 1957, yet the clumsiness of this production makes it seem antediluvian."
Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: "It has taken decades to bring Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" to the big screen.They should have waited longer."
Kurt Loder, the former Rolling Stone writer, for the Libertarian site, Reason Online: "The new, long-awaited film version of Atlas Shrugged is a mess, full of embalmed talk, enervated performances, impoverished effects, and cinematography that would barely pass muster in a TV show. Sitting through this picture is like watching early rehearsals of a stage play that's clearly doomed."
Peter Dubruge, Variety: "Part one of a trilogy that may never see completion, this hasty, low-budget adaptation would have Ayn Rand spinning in her grave."
Washington Post: "nearly as stilted, didactic and simplistic as Rand’s free-market fable."
Loren King, Boston Globe: "Even fans of Rand’s 1957 antigovernment manifesto may balk at having to endure dialogue that would be banal on the Lifetime channel, along with wooden performances..."
I wonder how Randroids will react when the marketplace they so worship rejects this film? That itself makes the spectacle a delicious one to watch. A lot more so than the actual movie.
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