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Alexander

November 24, 2004

Starring: Colin Farrell, Angelina Jolie, Val Kilmer, Christopher Plummer, Jared Leto, Anthony Hopkins

Let me just tell you that we have this friend named Alexander that is a very hot stripper. OK, by "we", I mean "me" and by "friend" I mean that he lets me stuff dollars down his pants and he knows my name. The man is from Bulgaria and he is straight (unfortunately) but we see him at a local gay bar (he knows where the money is) often enough that he knows who I am (what does that say about me?) and he always says "HI". Well, the point is that I think this movie could have been improved had this Alexander introduced the movie for us (or at least given me a lap dance at some point.)

I had high hopes for this movie. Well, maybe not high ones but some sort of hopes. It could have been really good. You have my Irish boyfriend, plus the amazing Angelina Jolie and Hannibal Lecter, and it is written and directed by Oliver Stone. How could it go wrong? Oh...let me tell you.

The movie opens with some weird hallucinogenic credits of eagles flying, banners waving, goofy music etc. It looked like a 1970s acid flashback. Then Old Ptolemy (Hopkins) delivers a very boring, pointless, annoying speech. I believe it was about 11 minutes long. He is wandering around a room delivering this incredibly long-winded speech about...I don't know what. I totally blanked out after the 30th Greek word I didn't understand. I'm sorry, but who are Perdiccus and Nearchus again and why do I need to know them?

We then go back in time to 340 B.C. (give or take a few B.C.s) to find a young Alexander playing with his mother, Chlamydias (or whatever her name was). She is telling him that he is the son of Zeus and she is giving him a life lesson using real snakes as a visual aid. Young Alex is intrigued and having a good time until his father the king (fat Val Kilmer) comes home and basically rapes his mother in front of little Alex.

Then next day Alex and his friends, Ptolemy (whom we will call Ptommy for short) and Hephaistion (Hephy for short) are in school with Captain Von Aristotle. Ari is telling them that women are good for marriage and babies but men are good for sex so it is OK to have both in their lives. Amen, Aristotle! Alex and Hephy share a glance and that is the start of their 15 year relationship.

We next see Alex when he is 18 (Colin at 28 doesn't make a very convincing 18 year old but it wasn't bad, I was more distracted by the bad blonde wig). He is talking to his mother (Jolie -- who at 31 makes a less convincing mother of a 28 year-old actor/18 year-old character but again I wasn't to bothered by it.) What I was bothered by was the fact that Angelina had a Greek-ish accent while Colin kept his Irish brogue (although it was muted quite a bit). Come on Colin, you are a better actor than that! I will say that Angelina Jolie looked absolutely amazing in this movie. She is a goddess! But I digress, Chlamydias is telling Alex that his fat one-eyed father (whom we'll call King Monoculus) is getting married to some floozy and basically disowning them. I'll wrap this part up quickly but Alex goes to the wedding and causes a scene and Monoculus threatens to have him exiled but in the next scene they are fine and later when Monoculus dies, Alex is made king. It's boring, I know. Keep in mind that before, during, after and between each scene, Anthony Hopkins (old Arthriticus), is over narrating everything for no reason.

I forget what happens next but basically Alex tries to take over the known world and succeeds. He has with him all of his friends and his lover Hephy, who share a few hugs and some nice dialogue about how Alex would do anything for Hephy because he loves him so, etc. But they never kiss (it was cut from the film) and don't even share a bed together -- boring! Jared Leto (Hephy) never even takes his shirt off, but later when Alex marries a barbarian woman named Roxanne, she is completely 100% naked (and Rosario Dawson has HUGE boobs) while Colin remains almost entirely clothed. DOUBLE STANDARD! I cry foul. There was one scene where Alex was getting into bed with some ugly eunuch guy and they showed Colin's bangers and mash from behind (nice butt, by the way) but it was fleeting. Anyway, that isn't why I go to the movies (it just helps.)

So the entire film is Alex conquering lands and cities like Babylon and some place called Bacteria. No thanks. Along his 7 year journey he manages to piss off all of his loyal soldiers because they see that he is just power hungry. Sadly, this wasn't translated onto the screen very well. We never get the real motivation of Alex to conquer the world so the battles scenes, while intense and bloody, don't really matter all that much.

At about 2 hours and 20 minutes I was like "How long is this damn movie?!" we still had 40 minutes to go. Come on!

By the time they reach India, pretty much everyone except for Hephy hates Alex. They want to go home but he convinces them to join him in one last battle where they are basically slaughtered by elephants. It was during this scene that I decided the monster on the TV show Lost must be a giant elephant. Mark my words. But I digress. During this scene, we get a flashback again to the night King Monoculus was murdered. The transition of this scene was disjointed and awkward and I think it originally existed chronologically in the film but they moved it so that we could have another Angelina Jolie scene towards the end of the movie (we hadn't seen her in about an hour or so.) So on his deathbed we get these extended scenes, which means that instead of just killing Alexander and ending the movie we have to prolong his death scene. But that wasn't the worst of it, we then have to endure old Arthriticus for even more ego-driven monologues. Just end the damn thing!

It's not that the movie super sucked or anything like Troy but it was just so dull throughout. These epics shouldn't exist unless they can be great like Gladiator or Braveheart. They just turn out to be vanity pieces filled with hot air.

It is safe to say that you all can skip this one, you honestly aren't missing anything by not seeing it. As much as I love Angelina Jolie and would gladly accept any STD from Colin Farrell I can't recommend this film.

My Grade: C