"Post No. 605"

Watched The Spirit flick.

Sadly disapointing.

Whereas Frank Miller's style worked fine with his own material ("Sin City"), it failed to capture the essence of the late, great Will Eisner.

The photography was overly-dark and action sequences quite quirky. Lots of little bits and pieces of various subplots all mixed together to form one movie. The acting was almost too campy (hard to get away from that aspect), although Sam Jackson did the best he could playing the role of the villian, "The Octopus", the height of this silliness and total political incorrectness was having him dressed in a nazi uniform. When he captures The Spirit, he rambles on (and on) worse and longer than Isaac Asimov trying to explain "why" a ray gun works.

The Octopus's henchmen was low-grade replicas of the villians from the 1960's Batman t.v. show right down to having their names written across the chest of their outfits.

The origin was screwed with to the point of "YOU made ME? I made YOU!" Once again a classic story re-written to fit the image of a creator of which Miller's not worthy of to lick the dog crap from Will Eisner's boots. And as this flick drug on (and on and on and on) I kept wondering how long it'd be before I ejected the disc from the player and sent it hurling through space in an attempt to put an end to my misery.

Frankly, the version done in the 1980's that was a "made-for-t.v." flick holds up better as a closer adaptation of the character. This new version reminds me of a badly made B-Grade flick such as "The Evil Dead" (which was actually probably better done for the budget it had), or other poorly done 1970's movies.

All wrapped up with such a cliche closing monologue that I was able to quote the actor's words before he spoke them.

Very (very) sad. I was hoping for better. But, in all fairness, I think trying to do such a flick is akin to doing film adapations of The Bible. If it isn't adapted the way one's been preached to all their lives, it turns out to be blasphemy. Perhaps if Miller had gone back and really looked at how Eisner laid out his Spirit stories a little better, it would have helped

Not all of the strips are all dark and moody. There was quite a bit of "light" in those, and a whole lot of humor. I'd personally have to rate this movie as a "D+", but, as usual, it's a personal opinion (but that of a guy who has always loved the material it was based upon).