Gary Casey

This movie is just a big turkey, stuffed to the brim with everything possible about Napoleon's life. It is like old Ridley just decided to take a propaganda pamphlet designed by Wellington himself and gift us a caricature of Bonaparte played by an actor who slouches in many a regal chair, mumbling and groping his way through years of seeming perpetual Euro war. The actress playing Marie Antoinette will tell her grandchildren in 50 years that she was never so glad to have been beheaded so early on in this absolute travesty of a farcical thingy. Mon Dieu!

The first episode alone destroys any chance of Ratchet every becoming Kesey's Ratchet. It's such a pity but this mess is the result of deciding on giving us a Halloween monster from the first frame. The nurse was never that: Mildred is almost banal in her actions in the movie, dedicated to her belief that insanity has a cure through her rigorous routine and discipline. That's what makes her so dangerous in Cuckoo's Nest and the book. In this, the world is a cartoon so insane, the actual mental patients could never matter. One of the few things I have watched where I couldn't even watch the second episode, it's that bad. Pity.

Excellent, thought-provoking, refreshing change to the real Annihilation of cinema currently being foisted on us with those insufferable Thor, Ironman and Hulk mash-ups, all having thoroughly mutated into disgusting monsters far worse than the creatures the brilliant Natalie comes across in this behemoth of novel cinema. Enjoy your Captain America hybridized drivel if need be, but the rest of us need intellectual challenge like this the odd while. That or stronger whiskey.