As you may have heard by now, Troy is a lumbering disappointment. Granted, my thoughts may have been skewed by the fact that I attended Troy after midnight in the company of a classical milkmaid and a Maoist polymath, both with a tendency to guffaw at tedious moments. It's hard to pin down exactly where things go wrong: the casting is mostly fine, the money is right there on the screen, and the screenplay (by David Benioff, author of 25th Hour) is tantalizingly close to what it should have been. In trying to condense and dramatize and find a cinematic shape for the story's more incredible moments, it's an effort of which even Aristotle might have approved, compromises and all. But when the movie founders, it founders for reasons that the author of The Poetics would have easily diagnosed: craftsmanship and intelligence are no substitute for emotional committment, and Troy, above all, is an epic filmed without any apparent curiosity or passion. I'll give Aristotle the last word:

The Spectacle, though an attraction, is the least artistic of all the parts, and has the least to do with the art of poetry. The tragic effect is quite possible without a public performance and actors; and besides, the getting-up of the Spectacle is more a matter for the costumier than the poet.

Well, I guess I'm not quite done yet. Multiple spoilers ahead: 1) I approve of Benioff's revison of the duel between Menelaus and Paris, which provides a pretty surrogate for divine intervention and neatly dispatches of a boring character. 2) I was pleased that Andromache and Astyanax, Hector's wife and baby son, were allowed to escape at the end. I love them both dearly, and I'm glad that in this version of events, anyway, there aren't any babies tossed off the walls. 3) Based on what happens to Agamemnon, Hollywood isn't going to produce an Oresteia anytime soon, but do I smell The Aeneid in the works? (As Sharon H. pointed out, The Aeneid would make raw material for a much better movie, if only because Virgil is already writing for an audience of skeptics and ironists.) 4) A huge disappointment is the film's inability to find a solution to the problem of the Trojan Horse, which was recognized as all but unworkable even in Virgil's time. That's doubly sad, because a few minutes' thought suggests a couple of decent solutions. I'd share them, but I think there might be a potential story here. 5) Peter O'Toole makes a wonderful Priam, and if nothing else, his visit to the tents of Achilles will provide Gregory Nagy with another clip or two for Heroes. 6) As Hector says to Achilles, "Even enemies can show respect." De nobis fabula narratur.