12 YEARS A SLAVE is one of those movies on the borderline between Big Budget and Just Plain Boring. While the intentions may have been good (the only thing I came away with was the idea that even slavery was something that could be overcome with a lot of hard work and some unbelievable LUCK), it's Ejiofor's lackluster performance- and the ridiculously LAVISH look and feel of the movie- that undermines whatever serious message or insight(s) the filmmakers may have had in mind. Not ONCE during the course of the movie did I BELIEVE what I was seeing: it has an almost over-fed Television quality to it (not unlike DJANGO UNCHAINED, for instance). The Hype turns out to have been just that.