When you see the review quotes in newspaper ads, it's even worse. They're flat-out Oliver Stoned. In one ad appearing in the New York Times, we read Richard Roeper of Ebert & Roeper declare the movie to be "Wild ? Glorious ? Entertaining." There's a reason for those ellipses. It's not exactly what he wrote. The full sentence: "It's just a wild, glorious, wacky mess that I found entertaining."

  Newsweek film critic David Ansen raves in the ad that, "'Alexander' is filled with spectacular battles, opulent sets and grand passions." Now read Mr. Ansen's complete sentence: "Though filled with spectacular battles, opulent sets and grand Hellenic passions, this madly ambitious film doesn't compute." Nor was the movie studio about to quote this line from Ansen's review: "With this sometimes stunning, ultimately stupefying epic Stone has met his Waterloo." Or this sentence: "By the end of this histrionic historical slog, you are more likely to feel numb, and not at all sure what compelled him to tell this story. It's a long march with no destination in sight."

 So where does one go to find an accurate review, then? There's no science, of course, but for my money, go to the hilarious www.rottentomatoes.com site and its compendium of (mostly) Bronx cheers across the land. "I predict that 'Alexander's one achievement will be the most walked out movie of the year"? "Pretty much a mess, an alternately turgid and florid movie that feels like a drugged-out version of a Cecil B. DeMille epic"? "A swollen behemoth of a celluloid monster -- sometimes mildly interesting but most of the time downright boring"?"Toward the end of the movie, I wanted to kill Alexander just to get it over with and go home." ? "A great thunderous wreck, loud as a gong and just as hollow"? "An absolute mess."

 No critic puts this $155 million disaster in its place better than Eric Snider of EricDSnider.com. "Oliver Stone doesn't just create train wrecks. He knocks the train off the rails, sets it on fire, then kills every person on board. (And takes three hours to do it.)"

(With reports by Stephanie DuBois and Emily Feimster)