It was the dialog that turned me off. The movie was chopped up and resorted to voice-overs, the last refuge of bankrupt writing. But that might be tolerable if the actors were not speaking in perfect Hollywood cocktail party repartee. It was so obvious that this was your High School drama club dressing up and playing pretend. Nobody talked like this in 1919. Nobody but preening Hollywood people talk like this, even now. It was half trying to be a comedy, but was interspersed with truly horrific scenes, images, and situations.

I know, 400 years. So it is great to put in a lot of parts for Black folks in movies. But that Black regiment fighting in WWI was more likely staffed by illiterate farm boys, not upper-middle class elites with a Master's from Oberlin.

Every single scene came with the feeling of standing with the scrum of crew surrounding the actors. I am sure they all high-fived at their great natural delivery, and laughed and had a jolly good time before hitting the craft service table.

Equally distressing was the first-world-useless disposition of the characters. Oh, they danced, oh, they laughed, oh they had an uproarious good time. How about raising some kids, or taking care of a grandparent with Alzheimers, or deciding whether to get your spouse a pair of shoes instead of paying the rent? It just exuded this careless upper-class Hollywood pretension, where nobody has to work for a living, at least nobody that is anybody.

As others have noted, cinematography is top notch, as is set design, lighting and the rest. That gets it three stars. This proves working-class Hollywood still knows what they are doing, even if the producers, directors, and writers are in some magical-thinking fantasy-land.

And please, could we move past Nazis as the boogeyman? How about making the three evil businessmen Black, trying to institute a racialist dictatorship where they can hand out reparations and pay off just the Black student loans? Don't hold your breath, too brave for Hollywood, even if it would give three more Black guys SAG cards.

That this movie bombed so badly gives me hope for humanity. If my fellow citizens can see this is shoddy senseless work, well maybe common sense is really more common than I thought.