movie? not so good. at all.
special effects? none. zero. adding extra characters to the fight scenes, or, ooh, look, extra boats! but essentially, that was it.
musical score? hideous. some chick wailing for endless amounts of time. like music-less excerpts from a christina aguilara song.
dialog? poor. corny. cliched. sometimes with accents, sometimes without.
scenery? weak. wobbling golden statues. greece, in its prime, looking like modern day ruins.
acting? pretty bad. i'm actually a fan of brad pitt. i've defended him in discussions before. i think he gets a really bad rep, and that he's shown a lot of talent in quite a few of his roles. plus, he's so dreamy! ... but this movie? holy crap, was he horrible in it. pretty much justified people who believe him talentless. dramatic pauses where he looks constipated. deep thinking scenes ripped from bill and ted's. and achilles didn't hog all of the suck for himself -- there was plenty to go around.
footage? old. roughly 25 years old. much of the movie was shot like a 1970s action film. specifically, one from europe or australia that was later dubbed with american english. weird zooming techniques, characters temporarily out of focus, things appearing grainy when there's no reason it should. just bad.
fight scenes? not bad. some were actually pretty cool. hector vs. achilles was well played, but most were over too quickly. paris going from uberwuss to becoming legolas was a bit much, too.
comparisons to the great books? not much. the general story is there, minus every appearance and mention of a god. ...and greatness.
conclusion?
if you're not going to see one hollywood blockbuster this summer -- make it troy!
