Review of Watchmen (2009) by Chads. — 07 Mar 2009

Pants, stat! The glowing blue man with the transluscent appendage needs a pair of pants, like the lemur from "Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa" needs pants. Adrian(Matthew Goode) probably doesn't mind that the homoeroticism of "300" escaped its reels and found a new home, in which Dr.

Manhattan's nudism probably throws the other Watchmen into a homosexual panic. Quite pointedly, Adrian seems to know Dr. Manhattan(Billy Crudup) better than Laurie(Malin Akerman). While the girlfriend claims that the ultramarine entity is devoid of any compassion towards mankind, Adrian's alter-ego, Ozymanidas, notices the worry creases in the former Jon Osterman's face whenever he's vexed.

The Alexander-wannabe watches men, closely. But Laurie should be one to talk, the daring rescue of some people trapped in a burning high-rise that she and Dan a.k.a. Night Owl(Patrick Wilson) attend to, seems more about correcting her new beau's impotence and gettin' their middle-aged ya-yas out, than being selfless and valiant in a derring-do mission in the night air of this alternative New York.

It's mere foreplay: the superhero suits they run around in are nothing more than provocative get-ups to get them in the mood. There's something faintly "Seinfeld"-esque about Night Owl and Silk Spectre, and "Watchmen", in general.

Like the characters in the Larry David-created sitcom, these superheroes are more interested in saving their own skins- Rorschach(James Earl Haley) warns the other Watchmen about an assassination plot- than saving the skins of others.

How apropos that there's a Comedian(Jeffrey Dean Morgan) present. During the interim years of Allan Moore and David Gibbons' breakthrough graphic novel being stuck in developmental hell, Terry Zwigoff's adaptation of Daniel Clowes' "Ghost World" had already lured a portion of the literati into accepting the long-form comic book as a viable art form.

"Watchmen" won't convert the holdover naysayers(who pooh-pooh the thought of the comic book as literature, although Allison Bechdel's "Fun Home" and Adrian Tomine's "Shortcomings" are changing more minds), which is a crying shame, since in most fanboy circles, this is the standard-bearer.

While it falls short on vision, "Watchmen", more or less, holds your interest for over two hours-plus, and that's no small feat. But still, the bloated thing lacks true transcendence(for instance, the Saul Bellow army won't lay down their dog-eared copies of "The Adventures of Augie March" for this); it's just a comic book movie, albeit a reasonably smart one(not smarter than "Ironman").