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Question: What do a fat Ben Affleck, a slimy and annoying Adrien Brody, and an aging Diane Lane (made to look even more aging) have in common?
Answer: The long and boring “Hollywoodland,” in theaters today.
I have a sleep test for movies: If I’ve had a good night’s sleep and I fall asleep during a movie, anyway, than it was too boring for words. During “Hollywoodland,” I fell asleep not once, but three times. And I still didn’t miss a thing. That’s how slow and unexciting this movie is.

It’s the story of George Reeves, TV’s “Superman” in the late ’50s, and his suicide because he is unable to overcome his superhero for kids image and get serious acting gigs. It also follows a sleazy detective overacted by Adrien Brody, investigating his death. The conspiracy theories into whether he was murdered and other scenarios turn out to be just as absurd and uninteresting as this 2-hour, 6-minute disaster. It’s more evidence that a bloated Ben Affleck will never overcome his atrocious “Gigli” gig.
Just goes to show you that great ’50s clothes, cars, hairstyles, and art deco sets don’t make a movie. The plot does. And there really isn’t one here.
This movie is just the latest manifestation of Hollywood’s dwindling creativity and bottom-barrell reaching for movie subjects. It’s just one of a few of these silly conspiracy theory murder movies, based on real-life, but with little connection to it. This week, it’s “Hollywoodland.” Next week, it’s the even more awful, “The Black Dahlia“–which also has the same great ’50s clothes, cars, and style, but not much else.
Why should we care about George Reeves, just because he once played Superman man decades ago? This movie doesn’t give us a reason. And we wonder what other unexciting, waste-of-time suicide of a semi-celeb movie is next for the silver screen. Can we expect, “Freddie Prinze: Suicide or Did Chico Kill the Man”?
Skip this and rent something far more exciting and relevant, like “.”