In the first major review of Watchmen, Variety‘s Justin Chang has mixed feelings about the much anticipated superhero flick. An excerpt:

Yet the movie is ultimately undone by its own reverence; there’s simply no room for these characters and stories to breathe of their own accord, and even the most fastidiously replicated scenes can feel glib and truncated. As “Watchmen” lurches toward its apocalyptic (and slightly altered) finale, something happens that didn’t happen in the novel: Wavering in tone between seriousness and camp, and absent the cerebral tone that gave weight to some of the book’s headier ideas, the film seems to yield to the very superhero cliches it purports to subvert.

Uh oh, Watchmen fans. Did Snyder just fuck up your baby? You’ll have to wait until March 6 to find out.

Watchmen trailer after the jump …

This article appears in Feb 25 – Mar 3, 2009.