Marshall Fine: Review: The Spirit is disspiriting

Maybe you have to be a fan of The Spirit as a comic strip to enjoy it as a movie. Which would seem to limits its appeal severely, given that it was a cult item in printed form - and essentially ended in the early 1950s. To me, the Will Eisner series was neither fish nor fowl - not exciting enough to compare to, say, Batman comics. But neither was it funny enough to hold a candle to Mad magazine - Mad classic, that is, back in the day - which Eisner's work helped inspire. Still, based on Frank Miller's work with Robert Rodriguez on Sin City and the look of the Spirit trailer, this film seemed to promise something special. Unfortunately, the opposite is true. The action is listlessly cartoony, the humor even limper. The comparison here isn't to Sin City - it's to the Rocky and Bullwinkle movie (the one that serves as a permanent stain on Robert De Niro's filmography). This movie does indeed have a dated 1950s' Mad sensibility, just not its wit. If someone had used the word ... (link)