Creating a movie from a cultural icon is tricky business. Do you please the fans, or do you create a good movie? The two aren’t mutually exclusive, but it’s a perilous tightrope. I’m not familiar with the Watchmen comics, and coming out of the movie, I felt like someone’s guest at a work party: politely smiling and nodding at inside remarks I don’t really understand. Watchmen is beautifully marketed, the heroes look interesting and sexy, the concept of not-so-good-guys is intriguing, but this is all just a glossy cover for several stories shoddily bound together.

Watchmen takes place in the mid 80s that never was. Richard Nixon is spending his fourth term nervously fingering the big red button that will send the world into nuclear holocaust. The Watchmen are bound to stop this, but Tricky Dick legally disbanded their team when public pressure turned against the vigilante justice. The Watchmen we’re introduced to in this movie are actually the second generation of super (and not-so-super) heroes. The opening credits nicely montage the first Watchmen’s progress, demise, and retirement.

This second crop theoretically kicked some ass in the 70s, but we don’t see them really spring into action until the second half of the movie. Through the first half of the movie, we’re not even sure what their superpowers are, with the exception of the Vishnu-like Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup). The movie begins with sketchy Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley) investigating the murder of the ironically named Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan). There’s also a love triangle between Manhattan, Silk Spectre II (Malin Akerman) and Nite Owl II (Patrick Wilson). With all these subplots and seven characters worth of backstory, the movie is slowly muddled over three hours.

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Starring: Malin Akerman, Billy Crudup, Matthew Goode, Jackie Earle Haley, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Patrick Wilson

The visuals are great, though sadly, most of the stunners were revealed in trailers. True to great comic movies before it, Watchmen features lots of dark or high-contrast lighting and sharp camera angles. The use of slow-motion is a little overused, but helps to frame the action in the same way a graphic novel or comic does. The movie accomplishes the rare coupling of both frequent and relevant CGI. I do think someone should get Dr. Manhattan a thong so we don’t see his dongle waggling back and forth as he strides through important dramatic scenes. (Maybe it’s just my dirty, easily distracted mind.)

That’s not the only distracting feature of Watchmen. Women are frequently brutalized through the film, and some of the violent themes are a little difficult to stomach. A vivid sexual assault and a child’s death are particularly gruesome if not graphic.

Though the art direction is generally very good, if not a little open-handed, the music is often painful. Hendrix’s “All Along the Watchtower” meets the tone and has a great lyric match as two heroes stride up to a villian’s fortress. Nat King Cole’s “Unforgettable” is incongruous with a violent murder, and I understand that artistic dichotomy. Nena’s “99 Luftballoons” serves only to remind us it’s the 80s as Nite Owl and Silk Spectre meet for a sensual dinner: not appropriate. But Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” took the cake and ground it into the dirt by ruining what would’ve otherwise been a perfectly steamy sex scene. So much for my dirty, easily distracted mind.

Apart from having a slow start and two main characters that never get developed, Watchmen does have some interesting story and dialog. Rorschach’s contempt for the scum of the earth, The Comedian’s fatalism, and Manhattan’s neutrality are all built with internal dialog that occasionally reads false, but is generally engaging. There are even a few great coup de grâce lines, but these vie for attention with all the movie’s bad one liners. I loved the bittersweet ending, but many of the subplots wrapped up in cliched reveals.

I’m not sure what place Watchmen has in comic movie history yet. You can’t watch the three hour movie with earplugs in and enjoy the eye candy; it’s just not that kinetic. You can’t hail this as message-heavy Cinema either, as the attention paid to deeper social issues is rather slipshod and rushed in the reveal. I have a strong suspicion that if these themes are interesting to you, you’re better off reading the comics.