Before I get down to serious ripping and shredding, I need to get this off my chest.

As a baby boomer, I read and thrilled to Frank Herbert‘s prescient, imaginative, and mythic futuristic novel. Canadian director Denis Villeneuve, of murky self-important Arrival fame, has taken it upon himself to launch an almost-three hour cinema version of Dune. This was an error of epic proportions. The badness of this film is the only thing close to epic in this exercise of cine-waste so awful, so clueless, so dis-inspired as to defy reason.

Villeneuve’s Dune is also murky, lethargic, impenetrable, and boring.  What he has done to a seminal text should be illegal, like using the Holy Grail as a jello mold. All I could think, as I reeled out of the theater on a salt high, thanks to over-priced movie popcorn, was: how could I get back those three hours of my life?

Grab a sharp stick, aim it squarely at your left eye (or right, whatever you like) and stab! You will thus experience a more pleasurable sensation than that delivered by the clueless Canadian and his unpleasant cast.

Okay.

Now I can begin. I’ll start with the most egregious error made by this bloated production team: casting. It’s hard to recall casting this misguided, even hilarious, since that big blonde gentile Charlton Heston sauntered down the mountain with stone tablets in The Ten Commandments.

Starting with the worst: wasp-waisted Timothee Chalamet as the fierce, psychicically gifted messianic avatar Paul Atriedes. Chalamet would be fine in a bio-pic playing the young Oscar Wilde. Ideally in a film without any speaking parts. Chalamet was wretched as well as utterly unbelievable as the heir apparent to a powerful royal dynasty as well as leader of the new eco-desert utopia on Arakis. Yet, there might be five minutes of this almost 3-hour film in which the anorexic teen idol does not appear. He is so not up to the task that his mere presence inspires fantasies of the merely awful Kyle MacLachlen in David Lynch’s lackluster attempt to bring Dune to the screen 40 years earlier.

Maybe worse is the presence of Oscar Isaac. His mere presence on-screen is cause for genuine alarm, but to watch him attempt something like gravitas as Paul’s ill-fated father Duke Leto Atriedes is akin to enduring a three-hour root canal procedure. Does no one understand the importance of vocal power and nuance in filmmaking these days?

Rebecca Ferguson as Paul’s mother, the supernaturally trained Lady Jessica who teaches her son the special powers of her psychic order the Bene Gesserit, has an appropriately intelligent voice. We believe that she believes what she’s saying. Yet she, as all the others, is sabotaged again and again by a silly script.

And Josh Brolin as the adroit, amiable fight master Gurney Halleck? Not bloody likely. Brolin, with his Marine haircut and fatigues, looks like he stepped out of another film, and another timeline. He should have checked in with his acting coach before filming. So should Sharon Duncan-Brewster, who looks great as the double agent Shadout Mapes, but again, appears to have no working knowledge of the script, its language (English), or its meaning.

Another who needs slapping around is the once great  Javier Bardem, a wooden cartoon of the mighty warrior of the desert tribe, the Fremen. All I could think of was Anthony Quinn as the Bedouin leader in Lawrence of Arabia. Quinn was more believable.

Here I’ll circle back on poor matinee-idol-du-jour Chalamet, who is burning through his fifteen minutes like an addict through fentanyl. So physically wraith-like and awkward as to mock the idea that he could match knives with the Fremen soldier who calls him out, Chalamet appears not to understand or care what he is doing. Indeed, he appears embarrassed to be in front of the camera, especially given the lingering closeups he has to endure. Is he Villeneuve’s fantasy boy?

I’m too exhausted to continue.

My next installment of Dune demolition will involve asking whether ponderous camerawork, massive explosions and a behemoth score can actually substitute for a script, dramatic tension, excitement, inspiration, and/or (god help us) acting.

to be continued…..