Late to the party, just watched nay endured 'that' Napoleon movie

Just watched Napoleon this evening (released today on Apple TV) and oh my oh my what can I say that has not already been said !?

What a waste of talent and a complete affront to history and even simple story telling and as a history/movie buff it was at times an excruciating watch. 

Now I do not expect, nor indeed want, Hollywood history based films to be documentaries and understand fully the need to condense events or characters to propel a movie or convey drama but by heck this was mostly a turgid, cringe worthy 150 or so minutes of film making.

Such a pity as there were some marvellous vistas (Egypt looked stunning as did marching Prussian Army for instance) and sumptuous sets and costumes but these were denigrated to occasional background noise by the overall crapness of the so called story.

Of course the 'battle' scenes were what I was really watching for and oh dearie, dearie me is the most polite I can be, such potential simply wasted in such pathetic cartoonish style. 

On plus side Waterloo had me literally laughing out loud (along with the under the table 'seduction') and who knew Boney lead so many cavalry charges sabre in hand throughout his career, nor indeed that French cannon hit the tops of Pyramids, I could go on but shall refrain, and to paraphrase Ridley Scott (how are the mighty fallen) "I wasn't there so what the actual feck do I know ?".

Ah well was I guess it was watchable in its own painfully horrid way and I never thought Braveheart would be worsted, but that is at least a proper 'movie' able to tell a compelling story with decent acting alongside the albeit truly horrible history.

Indeed there have been several stinkers from historical perspective but most are at least entertaining in the main (stand up Anzio, Spartacus, Battle of the Bulge) but this was such a disappointing experience. 

As an aside I watched with better half who also thought it was disjointed (understatement) and awful overall without fully understanding my ire at battle scenes, indeed she commented that the only decently acted scene was that of Boney hearing of Josephines death, brief though it was.

I also had to watch a few scenes from Waterloo to cleanse my eyeballs afterwards..........

 

There he is sabre in hand.............again

One of the better vistas soon ruined by farcical 'action'

Boney spends a lot of time with fingers in ears, which may actually be accurate but I was not there so cannot confirm or refute

There he goes again doing his Ney (not given even a mention) impersonation