Hollywoodland

All style and no substance. Is that enough for a review? Ok, so I'll elaborate a little more on it.

Let me start with the good stuff first. The acting by Diane Lane and Adrien Brody is top notch. They really have their characters down and bring nice subtleties to their respective roles. Alan Coulter, the director, definitely has the film noir style down and moves the camera effectively.

My two biggest problems are with Ben Affleck and his weird dialect and the story itself. Affleck does a good job of portraying George Reeves, but whether or not it was his or the director's idea to use a very affected dialect is something I do not know. It bothered me through out the entire film. Mind you, I am far too young to have grown up watching The Adventures of Superman on TV with Reeves, but I did watch the show on Nickelodeon while growing up. It's also been a while since I have seen any of the episodes, but I don't remember Reeves having some weird dialect or accent. He had a typical midwestern, neutral American accent. Yet, Affleck uses this accent to annoying effect. I really wish he would have just used his normal speaking voice.

My other problem with the story is that all it does is asks questions and poses theories but never really conclusively attempt to answer any of the questions. Perhaps the reason for this is practical. In over 47 years, there has never been any conclusive evidence that Reeves didn't commit suicide. And the theories the movie proposes seem plausible enough, but they also lay sufficient ground work that Reeves did commit suicide due to his apparent sadness about the direction of his career and personal life.

It's a movie I really wanted to enjoy, but it was totally unsatisfying and left me restless during its entire duration. Everyone, including all of the peripheral characters, bring a very realistic portrayal to it all, yet the story seemed to lack some cohesive direction. It didn't quite know if it wanted to be a docu-drama in an Oliver Stone JFK sense or if it wanted to be a drama based on actual facts.