The performances are at best a mixed bag. Jackie Earle Haley’s Rorschach is probably the standout - at the screening I attended his “you’re locked in here with me” got the sole spontaneous cheer, and he managed to make Rorschach’s “Rorschach voice” seem unforced and realistic. Billy Crudup’s Dr. Manhattan is eerie and entertaining, and Patrick Wilson’s Nite Owl is passable to decent. Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s Comedian is an actor in search of good direction who doesn’t get it. Matthew Goode’s Ozymandias is just too joyfully evil for the turn to surprise a newcomer or satisfy someone already familiar with the story, and Malin Akerman’s Silk Spectre is terrible, one of the worst performances I have seen in years; she absolutely wrecks every scene she’s in and given how many important scenes have Silk Spectre in them, that’s a lot of the most important parts of the movie.

But even when the actors are good, the dialogue is just terrible, be it Moore’s or no. Haley and Crudup can get away with it because of their characters, but some of the dreck the other characters get is just… ugh. The controversial “plot changes” are barely a blip, and frankly the new bits of storyline work just as well.

Overblown, overlong crap.