Critic's Corner

Raoul is a master at hindsight. If he'd been on the Titanic, the first thing he'd have said in the lifeboat would have been, "That's why I wanted to take the bus."

His first words on leaving the movie last night were, "I told you we should have seen Sweeney Todd."

Me, I got fooled by the critics. Everybody gave it five stars. It's based on a classic story, an epic tale of how America was built.

Well, okay. So America was built by ambitious, eccentric liars who didn't sleep with women and may have touched a young girl inappropriately. I'll bet a clog-dancing Anabaptist had a hand in there somewhere, too, but I don't particularly want to watch that story either.

Rather than showing me anything new about America or Americans, this film teaches me only about filmmaking. That the director and the writer should go home in separate cars.

Now I'm thinking maybe Raoul is right: the signs were there. Maybe at some point "epic" was flattering, but during my lifetime it hasn't meant anything other than long. Plus, it seems symptomatic of the filmmaker's confusion that he took his title from an ad for Saw III.

Trust me: there will be sleep.