the_narrator’s review published on Letterboxd:
The first 50 minutes of this movie gave me hope I might be one of the people who really like this. They're admittedly a mess, but the ingredients are all interesting enough that it ends up tasting pretty good (it helps that there's Jesse Eisenberg around to do shit like start and immediately drop a Blanche DuBois impression and feed a Jolly Rancher to a grown man like he's a fussy toddler). Everything starts going to shit by the time the Batmobile chase comes around to pad out the splosion count and the film forgets that it was trying for a bit to have themes, and the turn into it being People Hitting Each Other: The IMAX Experience is such a drop that the much-maligned Martha is easily the best part, because that's just an interesting idea executed very clumsily, whereas the rest of what comes before and after that is as beyond saving as Eleanor Rigby. I understand that having less of the Batman/Superman fight might as well entail it being cut from the film altogether, but the punching provides little relief when you realize that you don't actually know shit about the specifics of anything that happened in the lead-up to the punching (I watched the Theatrical Cut, for reasons of my rental copy not having the Extended Cut, and I've heard that the EC makes progress in having the film make much of any sense). It's pretty great-looking (much better-looking than the aesthetic mush of Man of Steel), and there are a handful of good performances (MVPs being Eisenberg, Jeremy Irons, and Gal Gadot), but I'm afraid I reside with the consensus (although maybe not, since I didn't find it to be the worst thing since skin cancer).