Early reviews blast 'Spirit'

The premiere for "The Spirit" was last night at the Chinese Theater in Hollywood and the early word is not good.

Justin Chang at Variety writes:

A slain cop is resurrected as a masked crime-fighter in "The Spirit," but Frank Miller's solo writing-directing debut plunges into a watery grave early on and spends roughly the next 100 minutes gasping for air. Pushing well past the point of self-parody, Miller has done Will Eisner's pioneering comicstrip no favors by drenching it in the same self-consciously neo-noir monochrome put to much more compelling use in "Sin City." Graphic-novel geeks will be enticed by the promise of sleek babes and equally eye-popping f/x, but general audiences will probably pass on this visually arresting but wholly disposable Miller-lite exercise.

Newsarama, which also covered the New York-based junket, is a little more polite about it:

If this film does well enough to rate a sequel, and with some more directorial seasoning under Miller’s belt, perhaps future installments could achieve the greatness this one just frustratingly teases. As it stands, “The Spirit” does a precarious balancing act juxtaposing great moments and terrible ones, leaving audiences likely be split over which makes the greater impression.

And Ain't It Cool News skewers the film as the worst since "Battlefield Earth." Ouch.

And now I’ve seen something that has taken the top prize from “Battlefield Earth.” I mean, I honestly thought that would never happen. And it’s not like there aren’t MANY shitty movies made every year, and it’s not like I don’t SEE many of those. In fact, friends of mine and I have recently started a “Bad Movie Night,” where we have an opening act, a main feature, and a dessert: all of incredibly bad film & TV (the last one we did featured a vampire theme, so we started with “Knight Beat” (only available on VHS, but highly recommended), we feasted on the horror that is “Lost Boys 2: The Tribe”, and then for dessert, watched the (very) little-seen, “Paul Lynde’s Halloween Special” (holy crap! Amazing!). They’re our very own “MST3K” nights.

I'll withhold judgment until I've seen the film, though given my general reaction to Frank Miller's writing the past decade I can't say my hopes for this film are high (despite the apparently excellent technical aspects of the film) were terribly high even before reading the reviews.