Match Point: am I the only one who thought this movie was POOP?

The movie starts with a tennis match, and discussion about how sometimes in life it's important to be good, but other times? It's important to be lucky. Good premise. And there's a great visual of a tennis ball hitting the net, and you're not sure which way the ball's going to fall -- forward, making a win, or backwards, a loss.

Then the movie goes on for five years and the ending is terrific. But the half-decade between start and finish? Poop! Dreck! Skip it!

My main complaint is that this is a story we've heard a million times. Poor boy meets rich boy (Kate thinks they're gay off the bat), rich boy has sister, poor boy meets rich girl, enters rich world. Then poor boy meets beautiful (American) girl, some very aggressive flirtation happens until... rich boy comes in and says "have you met my fiancee?"

Boring.

Sure there are twists and turns in the film, and I won't give anything away (on the off chance that you want to decide for yourself that this is poop), but Jonathan Rhys-Meyers is just not good. And Scarlett, in my opinion, is not bringing her A-game. Mostly because there's so much boring dreck in between the start and finish (that is masquerading as character development, but that's hard to tell because Mr. Rhys Meyer CAN'T ACT).

I was so excited because I thought this would be so great. (and apparently lots of people think it is -- it has a 79 percent fresh rating at rottentomatoes.com -- which used to be a much easier site to navigate, but is still entertaining in that it rates movies based on how many rotten tomatoes might get thrown at them) But I find I have to agree with those that speak less highly:

"'Match Point' crafts the beginning of a better than average
fish-out-of-water tale, bores us for an hour with a milquetoast affair, then
gives us a wild sucker punch of an ending that even a Nostradamus / John Edward
clairvoyance tag team couldn't predict." -- Mike
Ward, Richmond.com

"while not as awful as some of Allens flubs, this film is one of those
instances in which the cinematic ball doesnt quite make it over the net." Reviews
by Dr. Frank Swietek

Skip it. Watch summer re-runs instead!