Today is Oscar Sunday, when Hollywood self-congratulates to the point of apoplexy, celebrating the best and brightest (or most cannily marketed) that the film industry has to offer.

So how do I honor this momentous day? I go to see hack auteur Paul W.S. Anderson’s “historical” epic Pompeii.

You might recall Anderson’s last outing in which he thought it would be nifty to turn The Three Musketeers into some steam-punk orgy of tomfoolery that included fire-breathing, clockworks dirigibles. And he’s also made a whole bunch of junk movies based on video games.

So this track record certainly qualifies him to direct a film depicting one of the most compelling and haunting natural disasters to befall mankind. Right.

The script is basically a sugary smoothie of no nutritional value, blending the corny bad boy/good girl/class warfare-doomed romance of Titanic, the episodic “do we really care if these people get crushed by flaming objects?” disaster of The Towering Inferno, and a smattering of the weirdly homoerotic oeuvre of Anderson’s fellow b-movie ham-hander Zack Snyder (see: 300 …. or the Abercrombie and Fitch catalogue).

As for the obvious Titanic swipe (another movie I can’t stand, I might add) Anderson even has lead Emily Browning intoning “I’ll never let you go!” at the film’s abrupt conclusion. In a sign of some cinematic advancement, though, she doesn’t then instantaneously contradict herself by dropping her beau Kit Harington (Game of Thrones) into the briny depths – as Kate Winslet did to a blue-lipped, bug-eyed Leonardo DiCaprio.

You’d be better off watching a History Channel documentary on the volcano that ate a Roman seaside village than this over-baked tripe. And so would the rest of the cast. Why is brilliant Jared Harris continuing his downward slide appearing in crud like this? He and Carrie-Anne Moss soldier through their stilted, portentous dialogue about investing in Pompeii’s new vomitoria or some such nonsense. I think he’s the mayor of Pompeii? I have no idea.

Then Kiefer Sutherland shows up seeming very … Kiefer Sutherland … as ominous Roman Senator (by way of Malibu) who wants to steal Harris’ daughter away. ‘Cause of course when a volcano (which I will admit is truly impressive, by the way) starts blowing chunks all over town, what would you do? I’d stop for a little palace intrigue, myself. Who cares if the grocery store just got flash-fried! Let’s twirl our proverbial mustache and destroy a family for kicks!

(And didn’t Mount Vesuvius erupt like instantly so that people were trapped in time baking bread and stuff? That’s what I remember from grade school, though that could be totally wrong. That would have made for a much shorter movie, and we could have avoided the laughable moments of crockery shaking and dust falling from ceilings as people furrowed their brows confused about the imminent mountain-go-boom headed their way.)

I was entertained, but I half expected Fred Astaire, Tony Curtis, Ricardo Montalban, Shelley Winters, and Jean Simmons to show up wearing togas and hanging out with bell boys or maybe breaking into a musical number. That would have helped immeasurably.

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Reel Roy Reviews is now a book! In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the book currently is being carried by Bookbound in Ann Arbor, Michigan; by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan; and by Memory Lane Gift Shop in Columbia City, Indiana. Bookbound and Memory Lane both also have copies of Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series.