Review of Atlas Shrugged: Part I (2011) by Angus C — 03 Jan 2013

Exhausting film to watch, just lost the message it intended to offer. This was a bad film. If you liked the message -- or, the intended message, which for me was lost due to the naps I took while I watched it -- that's one thing. This movie is an exhausting bore with glimpses of of the passion it might have conveyed for a philosophy.

The most interesting thing about this film is the opportunity it created for critics who reject Ayn Rand's work for various, and deeply held, reasons. The attacks on this film, not for being a bad film, but for Rand's ideas, were far more instructive of people than the movie was. It is an insight into the views of critics based far from this or other movies. Many critics found it irresistible to attack Rand's philosophical and economic views, not the movie. Some treat objectivism as a wholly immature viewpoint. They manage to do so without doing better than snarky, arrogant and crass despite the reasonably in-depth and brash perspective Rand offered. The twitchy anti-Rand write-ups of many critics was humorous to me; it would be downright hilarious were it not so disappointing to see.