Du not bother

Sometimes I think the people who make movie trailers should get paid a lot more money than the people who make movies.

Because the previews made Duplicity look like it'd be the best movie of the year. Really good-looking international spies (Julia Roberts and Clive Owen, in case you missed it) involved in corporate espionage, maybe competing, maybe collaborating, all while cracking snappy one-liners and - did I mention this? - being really good looking. What could be better?

When movie day arrived, I didn't want to build it up too much, so when I saw the glowing headline and lead paragraph of the New York Times review, I didn't read any further. Effervescent? Elegantly pleasurable? Ohhh yeah.

And then? Blechh. The movie seemed so concerned with being cool - the "suave" kind of cool and the "aloof" kind of cool - that I didn't care about any of it. A better movie would have made it fun to try unraveling all of the lies that Clive and Julia were telling their clients, their enemies and each other, but the action was so uninteresting that it wasn't worth the effort. There was a nice twist at the end that made me feel like I hadn't completely wasted the two hours and $12. But just barely.

So, your official Six-word Movie Review...
The film: Duplicity
The six-word review: Skip it; re-watch Michael Clayton instead.