One of my most favorite things about mediocre summer blockbusters is the smartly written, snarky, scathing reviews from some movie critics.
Enter, Roger Ebert on Conan the Barbarian:
This Marique, she's a piece of work. She has white pancake makeup, blood red lips, cute little facial tattoos and wickedly sharp metal talons on her fingers. At one point. she blows some magic dust at Conan, and the dust turns into a team of warriors made of sand. This is a neat special effect, although it raises the question if you turn back to sand when Conan slices you, what kind of a life is that?*snicker*
How about John DeFore at the Washington Post?
If indeed there has been a community of film buffs yearning for a "Conan" reboot, they could hardly be hoping for a more appropriate slab of beef to play him than Jason Momoa - a Hawaiian with muscle tone to make Frank Frazetta weep and perpetually flared nostrils that, one suspects, can smell an enemy's blood long before it spurts from severed arteries.*LAUGH* Ouch!
Those nostrils do a lot of Momoa's acting, to be honest. As right as he is looks-wise, Momoa falls short in attitude: He speaks in one of those trying-too-hard baritones heard in young jocks whose greatest fear is being called gay. Combine his vocal delivery with the obligatory misogyny ("Woman! I said come here!"), and you come dangerously close to Fratboy the Bar-brawler-ian.
But maybe this review will make you want to see it?
This is the movie for people who like blood, violence and topless women. Who is still reading this review?So, maybe not all bad, right boys? In 3-D no less! Fess up, who's seeing the movie?
