That's what it sounds like Oliver Stone should have named his latest cinematic atrocity.

Stone gives himself much credit of "telling the truth" about Alexander's bisexuality as if it's some progressive badge of honor, but at the same time he can't get away from the cruelest, least imaginative stereotyping: His Alexander, as expressed through the weepy histrionics of Colin Farrell, is more like a desperate housewife than a soldier. He's always crying, his voice trembles, his eyes fill with tears.

Actually, he sounds like an early version of Bill Clinton. If he got the lip-biting thing down, he'd be ready to run for "Alexander The President."

The movie apparently tells us a lot more about Oliver Stone than about Alexander:

The movie lacks any convincing ideas about Alexander. Stone advances but one, the notion that Alexander was an early multiculturalist, who wanted to "unify" the globe. He seems not to recognize this as a standard agitprop of the totalitarian mind-set, always repulsive, but more so here in a movie that glosses over the boy-king's frequent massacres. Conquerors always want "unity," Stalin a unity of Russia without kulaks, Hitler a Europe without Jews, Mao a China without deviationists and wreckers. All of these boys loved to wax lyrical about unity while they were breaking human eggs in the millions, and so it was with Alexander, who wanted world unity without Persians, Egyptians, Sumerians, Turks and Indians.

Read the whole thing. It's Mark Steynian.

Over at National Review's The Corner, they have a pretty devastating review of the movie:

STONE'S DISASTER [John Podhoretz]
Oliver Stone's Alexander, which opens today, isn't just bad. It's Springtime for Hitler bad. I haven't guffawed this hard since I saw Airplane for the first time 24 years ago. This is one of the colossal catastrophes of all time. At a screening on Monday night, during the death scene of Alexander's lover Hephaiston, people were screaming with laughter as Alexander made a big speech while, behind him in soft focus, Hephaiston went into a conniption fit and croaked. Plus, Angelina Jolie plays Alexander's mother like she was Natasha from the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons. It's almost worth seeing, but don't, because if you're like me and want to see Oliver Stone utterly destroyed for his artistic and political crimes, you will make sure not to contribute to the box-office coffers of what is sure to go down in the annals of moviedom as Heaven's Gate with rampaging evil elephants (no, I'm not kidding).

In case anyone doesn't already know, Mary Renault wrote several novels about Alexander which are deeply engaging and as true as the historical record permits. They are all still in print, although Renault wrote them 30 years ago (Renault herself died in 1983). Worth mentioning is that Alexander is presented in his own time, portrayed as he probably would have been seen by his contemporaries, and not made into a stooge for modern sociopolitical axe-grinders.

> Stone advances but one, the notion that Alexander was an early
> multiculturalist, who wanted to "unify" the globe. He seems not to
> recognize this as a standard agitprop of the totalitarian mind-set,
> always repulsive, but more so here in a movie that glosses over the
> boy-king's frequent massacres.

Alas, a failing not unique to Oliver Stone.

Last night, I happened to catch a portion of a History Channel program about the Incas. They mentioned there's a modern movement to portray the Incas as socially enlightened New Age folks living in harmony with nature, which (they rightly point out) is pretty hard to square with the reality of the Incan Empire -- empires seldom being acquired through peaceful means.

Rand,
A much better allegory of Alexander the Great is to be found in the superb anime, "Reign". It's not surprising to me that Japanese anime story writers can come up with a better script than Stone, nor that anime cartoon characters are better actors than Stone's stars.
Mike Daley

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0000C825E/qid=1101352037/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_3/104-1551860-9455153?v=glance&s=dvd

Saw it on Thanksgiving with family. It is indeed a stinker. Avoid it like the plague.