"The Reader" Doesn't Scan

Just back from "The Reader." It doesn't work for me--it's one of those arthouse dramas that, had it been released in May instead of December, would have been forgotten by now instead of being talked up as a Best Picture nominee.

"The Reader" fails for several reasons, but mainly because it attempts to make a complex moral situation out of a very simple one--asking the audience to find great depth in this stuff is like asking someone to spend two hours adding 1+1; it just doesn't take very long to get to the bottom line. Beyond that, the great emotions assigned to the lead characters simply aren't justified given what trivial interaction we see them engaged in. Finally, there's a male fantasy element here that is little more than just that, no matter how elegantly the sex scenes are choreographed and lighted (lit?).

"The Reader" is a little pretentious, and a lot presumptuous in using the suffering of the Holocaust as a plot device for such trivial--and, again, pretentious--fare.