Once you get past the horrid directing and vision of The Spirit, you're left with sub-par dialogue, bleak action and a retarded story. It's definitely not the worst thing I've ever seen though.
I wanted so badly to like this film, even a little bit. But, truth be told, it was God Awful. Terrible acting, terrible dialog, bizarre filming, terrible pacing.....and the funny thing is, I LOVE Frank Miller. BUT this movie is almost reprehensible in the way that it just wastes sooooo much talent.
Blech. I've tried to watch this thing about four times and never make it more than an hour into it. It really just seems pointless after the mastery of Sin City.
Really disappointing considering the quality of some of the actors. I actually like the genre but this was just so "blah" and the visuals just seemed a bad Sin City copycat gone wrong.
Laughably--literally--bad in every respect but redeemed solely by the depths of absurdity it plunges to, from Looney Toons-esque fights to Nazi belly dancer dentistry.
The Spirit is a film that is below average at its best. And mostly just a bit worse than that. Problem especially is that it comes out as a bad copy of Sin City, with less humor, less charm, worse acting, etc. But worst was simply the lack of debth in stylistic technique; which is exactly what is so important for this kind of film (and what made Sin City such a classic from the first second).
Samuel L. Jackson and Scarlett Johansson playing Nazi dentist supervillains is like an automatic 5/10 for me. The rest of the movie is just that awful.
Not quite deserving of its terrible reputation. It's a fun movie that doesn't take itself too seriously. There's a sense of self-awareness as everyone involved seems to be in on the joke. The action is cartoonish, the dialogue absurd, and the visual style punctuates the comedy well.
The Spirit felt much longer than it really was. That's never a good sign. There was little to keep me watching it, save for the interesting visual style that was already done a few years prior in Sin City. And at least in that case, I was entertained for the majority of the time. The Spirit falls flat, mostly because of its uninteresting character, lackluster acting and almost non-existent story. It's intermittently funny, but that, and the visual style, is about all I can say is worth praising.