Duk

I'm usually a harsh critic of movies, and I rarely disagree with a 29% on Rottentomatoes and 44 on Metacritic, but I think they totally missed the boat on this movie.

This movie had heart, some humor, and good writing. The only objection I might have is a lot of sexual humor that some might find objectionable for the kids they took to it.

Sandler is very likable. The movie has an edge, and it's funny.

Even has a moral to it that's handled smoothly.

On the drama/lifelesson side, I thought it did one of the best jobs at capturing that whole Kapra-alternate reality thing of any modern movie. Usually that sort of thing comes off horribly badly and clumsily (e.g. Scooged, and the horrible Mr. Destiny).

Maybe they just didn't know to expect this from Sandler. I had no expectations and was pleasantly surprised.

I thoroughly enjoyed this movie.

Treat Williams and Kevin J. O'Connor in particular are very good.

It's a low budget genre flick, but acting is excellent across the board. O'Connor is great comic relief. The monster is clichéd, but cool. Quality and care went into this movie across the board.

I definitely recommend this movie without reservation.

I've seen it several times on cable as well as originally on DVD, and my opinion of it has held up.

Wes Studi (never bad in anything), Djimon Hounsou, and Anthony Heald (the psychologist from Silence of the Lambs) as bad guys and Anthony Heald are very competent as well.

I just can't understand how this movie got only a 5.4 from users.

I really enjoyed this movie. The way the movie started in Europe and how dark it was there... and the journey to Jerusalem... just wonderful stuff up to that point.

Liam Neeson, as usual, is just SO GOOD, you wish he had more screen time.

• Orlando Bloom, actually surprisingly, was able to carry the movie as a lead. I was surprised he had the heft to do it, but I agree with the critic who said that the beard helped. He was a man, not a boy.

• Battle scenes... incredible. I was really surprised that they could wow me, since we've been numbed by the quality of battle scenes in so many previous movies, but they did a great job.

• Portrayal of the Muslims. EXTREMELY fair. In being "even-handed" to Christians and Muslims there, if anything, they emphasized the Christian fanatics (in the form of the Templars in particular, to simplify things) as being the "badguys" more than anyone else... (which is historically accurate to some degree, in my understanding). I was surprised and pleased that they tried to be accurate, and didn't try to emphasize some "BAD MUSLIMS" to make it "even".

• Movie is very secular in it's moralizing.

And it portrays Christianity particularly religious men, VERY badly (the Priest who steals the cross from Bloom's wife's corpse... the Bishop in Jerusalem who's ready to convert to Islam at the first sign of defeat... and who also wants to abandon the civilians... the knights templar...) I thought this got a tad gratuitous. There were really NO GOOD Christian FIGURES IN THE MOVIE. The only good purported Christians were basically acting Agnostic (Bloom, Neeson, etc.) The actual religious Christians were made out to be hypocrites.

Meanwhile Saladhudin was a man of honor.. but also somewhat moderate.

• Movie could definitely have a little more narrative focus and maybe have a little more of an emotional circle for Orlando Bloom character. The emotional arc is ALREADY complete fairly early in the movie (Bloom becomes a man of conscience)... and it's kind of boring since the character doesn't really move after that.

But the movie tackled a HUGE topic and tackled it fairly well. I just wish there was a better script to handle the compelling personal journey for Orlando Bloom (from widower, murderer seeking redemption, lost bastard son) that was PROMISED at the beginning.

It seems that as soon as he brings water to his father's old land, he's just about done his journey, and it turns into a simple historical battle movie. (but a darn good one)