_The Watchmen_: The _Heeb_ Review

To be sure, The Watchmen is not the Jewiest of films (but since this is Jewdar, the Comedian is played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who also plays the dead deforeskinned dreamboat, Judah Botwin, in Weeds), but we took a rare break from our hawklike supervision of all things Heebish to catch a midnight showing of the Zack Snyder-directed flick.

Overall, Jewdar walked away tired, but happy. First of all, the casting is fantastic, and everybody looks and acts just like they should. Which brings us to our one caveat: The movies hews as closely to the comic as it can, which, since we loved the comic, was a good thing. But while it’s a great big-screen rendition of a complicated comic, it’s not a great movie. The dialogue often sounds like a comic book, and the pacing is at times more comic-booky than movie-ie. But there’s enough action, a dollop of T&A (including a sex scene that turns a little more explicit than the observant Jewdar needed to see), and enough interesting stuff going on to keep the non-nerd herd occupied.

As for fellow comic fans, as long as you’re not the kind of guy who will nit-pick over every little detail ("Uh, that dialogue should have been "Go away," not "Get away."), it’s a must see. For the first time, a director finally managed to put an Alan Moore comic on the big screen in a way that keeps faith with the original (and even if Moore himself isn’t happy with it, this time it’s because he’s a crazy artist genius, not, as in the case of V For Vendetta, because they messed it up). While changes were made, they were ones that made sense, and we have to be honest, we always skimmed through the pirate stuff when we read the comic, anyway.

While we won’t give away any spoilers, we have to say we absosmurfly loved the montage that presented the backstory of the film, and Snyder (who we don’t think is a MOT, but we could be wrong) did a great job of expressing a lot with very little (thereby redeeming himself from the horrendously bloated and slow 300 in which he took fairly little and dragged it out interminably–this time, he realized that you don’t have to have slow motion in every scene). The opening scene with the Comedian is great stuff, as is the flashback of the creation of Dr. Manhattan, and the urban riot sequence. Rorschach is awesome as to be expected. Like all good comic book nerds, we have our bones to pick, but they are tiny, and, big hearted and gluttonous as Jewdar is, we will simply swallow them, and give The Watchmen a solid 3 1/2 yellow stars.

What do you think?

About The Author

jewdar

The Tel Aviv-born, Milwaukee-bred Jewdar has a bachelors' from the University of Wisconsin, a Masters from NYU, and an Honorable Discharge from the US Army, where he spent two years as an infantryman in the 101st Airborne Division. He's the co-author of "The Big Book of Jewish Conspiracies", the Humor Editor of Heeb Magazine, and a watcher of TV. Smarter than most funny people, funnier than most smart people, he lives on the Lower East Side with his wife and two sons.

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