My big, fat Greek film flop

The intention of this biopic is to showcase the life and times of the great Macedonian ruler who conquered the known world by age 25. Stone gives Alexander the full modernization treatment. Sure, you won't be surprised to see that he was headstrong, ambitious and passionate. But you might do a double take seeing that he was also a mama's boy, a proponent of multi-culturalism and even a gay man, part time.

But the best parts of the film aren't historical or dramatic. They are unintentionally funny.

First, Colin Farrell ("S.W.A.T."), Hollywood's bad boy du jour, seems to take his role seriously, but he looks ridiculous in bottle blond, channeling Spicoli with a five o'clock shadow, moreso than Alexander the Great.

Throughout the movie, he states he strives to achieve the same glory and stature as one of his heroic ancestors, Achilles. He might as well have said "Brad Pitt," as he takes the same worn path that Pitt took in "Troy," including the requisite bare butt scene.

Moving on, let us consider Angelina Jolie ("Tomb Raider"), 29, who plays his mother, Olympias. Yes, that's right, his mother. Farrell is 28. It takes an utter suspension of disbelief to buy into this mother-son relationship. What, was Hillary Duff not available?

Then there's Alexander's relationship with Hephaistion (Jared Leto). Stone should be complimented for not completely flinching away from the purported love between Alexander and his boyhood friend.

It is impressive that Stone was able to incorporate a gay relationship into a $150 million movie. I imagine studio execs are probably shaking with fear at the prospect of all those red state moviegoers skipping this movie because men hug men with passion.

Aside from politics, the scenes between Farrell and Leto, as well as Farrell and a male concubine, seem incredibly stilted, unconvincing and cheesy, sort of like the vast majority of heterosexual love displayed on film in today's movies. By the way, you blue staters, if you're expecting to see Alexander and Hephaistion jump in the sack together, you will be disappointed. Any sort of physical love between the two is merely understood, wink wink, nod nod.

Moving on in our assessment of the unintentional hilarity offered by "Alexander" is the script. To the writers' credit, the action scenes are dynamic and the two major battles are portrayed with all the usual chaos and bloodiness that is typical of movie epics. The costumes are great, the CGI settings are realistic, the mountain vistas are breathtaking.

The only thing funnier than the just-graduated-from-film-school-dialogue written for this movie is the bouillabaisse of accents adopted by the actors. All who play Macedonians have Irish accents, while the Greek characters use British accents. At some point, you half expect the IRA to set off a car bomb.

But the best supporting accent award goes to Jolie. Instead of following the formula of Irish/English accents like the rest of the Europeans, Jolie decides to use an accent from, of all places, the deep forests of Eastern Europe. Think Count Dracula with a high pitch.

The most legitimate accents come from the actors playing Persians and Babylonians, although, considering the movie's track record, I assume they are probably flawed too. They all sound vaguely Middle Eastern, except for Roxane (Rosario Dawson), the Asiatic woman Alexander eventually marries. She decides to use a Latino accent, possibly Puerto Rican, maybe Cuban.

Why couldn't they all just forgo accents?

All in all, "Alexander," despite its strengths in comedy, will be a financial failure domestically. But the number of foreign markets that will gobble this up will be legion, sort of like how American cigarette companies are forced to distribute their wares overseas where the anti-smoking movement isn't as strong.

In places like Tokyo, Madrid, Seoul and others, I guess the anti-crappy movie movement isn't as strong.