Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Did you people see the same film I saw?

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

'Bel Ami' is a tale about a man who seduces and schemes his way through 1890s Paris. The phrase 'Bel Ami' means beautiful friend, but Pattinson's character seems to be a friend to no one at all in this story. His low life, down on his luck ex soldier is, to put it plainly, a scum bag. He cares nothing for the women he seduces or for their husbands who so generously help him to get on his feet. The only exception to the rule may be Christina Ricci's character, who is his very first conquest while he still had nothing. Their relationship has its ups and downs but somehow remains untarnished by the corrupt and malignant role that Pattinson's character had adopted.The plot line seems to be a simple one, but the writers do nothing with it. Their script is dry and dead when it is supposed to ooze passion, desire and wickedness. The characters spend little to no time getting to know each other or flirting before they jump into bed together. And it happens so rapidly and in quick succession of one another that the movie is like one big orgy, or a hot potato game of sex.The acting is yet another problem that this movie had. Pattinson didn't, doesn't and probably won't ever come across as the cold hearted playboy. He lacks malice or really any expression except pity or boredom in his face. He delivers his lines in such a monotonous monotone that you have to give credit to those acting the scene with him when they react as they do. Sometimes they even manage to drag a halfway decent performance from him. Christina Ricci was wonderful, filling her character with an empathy and a passion that was lacking from the rest of the movie. Uma Thurman seemed out of place in the film and seemed to be mimicking Pattinson in his drab and lifeless performance. The costume design was beautiful and at times can distract you from the lot of nothing going on in the picture, but ultimately this movie is all dressed up with nowhere to go. 5/10

It's 1890 Paris. Georges Duroy (Robert Pattinson) is a poor former soldier returning from Algeria. He reconnects with fellow soldier Charles Forestier (Philip Glenister) who is married to socialite Madeleine Forestier (Uma Thurman). He is introduced to her friends Clotilde de Marelle (Christina Ricci) and Virginie Rousset (Kristin Scott Thomas). Virginie's husband (Colm Meaney) is the editor of the newspaper La Vie Française where Georges gets a job publishing his war diaries in the paper.Pattinson is given so little to work with at the start and he does so little with it. The movie moves so quickly with him thrown in like catnip to these women. It's like the story is using a shortcut to get to a point which is utterly undeserved. The production is worthy. The actors involved are mostly first class. However Pattinson is underdeveloped. He is more like a child where a charming leading man should be. He is unsteady which I doubt those women would find sexy. He needs to be more confident or maybe darker and more mysterious. Everybody else is doing solid work. Other than some pretty production and some solid actors around Pattinson, there isn't much to recommend.

3 days down the line and I'm still thinking about Bel Ami with Robert Pattinson. Unlike what you might have heard, it wasn't bad because of Robert Pattinson. Although it might seem incongruous to have him as the lead, he does, overall, an all right job and it is easy to forget that many of the female characters that he seduces throughout the film are, on occasions over twice his age. The issue doesn't necessarily lie, either, with the inevitable cuts made to the original plot line in order to produce a usable script. Indeed, the book needs to be concentrated in order to fit a 1"30' format and so things have to be somewhat truncated, concentrated and, on occasions, selected out of the the original work. The same way, some details will unavoidably be removed while others exaggerated and the characters will be simplified. Also, on occasions, the plot line of a book can be used as little more than a general framework on which a whole new piece is build. This was done with Great Expectations with Gwyneth Paltrow, and resulted in an OK flick. It was also done with Apocalypse Now and resulted in what is largely regarded as a masterpiece. Part of the disappointment, with Bel Ami is that the original piece is already extremely condensed and highly cinematic. The plot line is extremely linear and has few complexities. This is partly what makes it a classic. It's short, straight to the point, on occasions quite harshly so, unforgiving and might even change how you view what it means to be human. Bel Ami is a dark, unforgiving piece where humanity is seen as little more than a troupe of baboons, whose entire lives revolve around a game of bullying, violence, backstabbing and the constant rise and fall of a dominant Alpha Male.It talks of corruption and the interaction between the press and the political class and how the media control our lives by dispensing and retaining information, spreading rumours and, occasionally, fabricating fake information. As a matter of fact, Bel Ami himself ends up being ordered to take part in a proper western style show down by his publisher after being exposed as having fabricated false info.If you can't make a movie with that, then you probably shouldn't be making movies at all...So, once you have removed these elements from the original scripts, you are left little more than the characters, or at least some of them, and a lose plot line, although the characters become unavoidably flimsy, once they have lost their basic motivations and so the plot line starts making no sense at all. The only ones that comes out more or less unscathed are, as expected, Christina Ricci and Kristin Scott-Thomas, but they probably could be reading the phone book and still be interesting. Everyone else is struggling.What results is occasionally excellent actors saying their lines without a clue about what's going on in a low budget, half arsed Victorian reconstruction... Otherwise, the movie fails largely because of the editing. About halfway through, scenes suddenly start becoming shorter, jumping from one situation to the next in a totally disjointed way. For instance, nothing has been said of Suzanne's character or her relationship with Bel Ami. Also, unless you've read the novel, I wonder if anyone would understand why she suddenly appears in Bel Ami's coach or that he's kidnapping her... How to explain, then, that her father insists on their getting married on the spot?Other major irritants include the powder coated cast aluminium Ikea garden table used in every single scene at the Follies Bergeres; Forestier played by a bloke easily in his fifties, although purportedly a private under 26 years old Pattinson a few of years prior to the beginning of the movie; Their friendship turned into deep animosity by the scriptwriters, which make it impossible to account for Bel Ami visiting him on his deathbed; Bel Ami's small business owners family turned into illiterate peasants who rely in the curé to write weekly letters (hard to imagine Bel Ami or his family as keen church goers...) or his life of utter squalor which makes no sense at all for an office worker in a railway company... And, last but not least, the name of media mogul Walter changed to Rousset in order to remove any suggestion of his Jewish origins... There was a time when Hollywood producers insisted on ethnic and religious minorities characters in order to help viewers of different backgrounds feel included. Doing the opposite is offensive.

'Bel Ami' means 'Beautiful Friend' in French which was based on more than 100 years-old French novel of the same name. It tells the story of a poor ex soldier who is promised to get him a new and better job in Paris by his ex army fellow. Actually he's not meant for that job but the way he uses his new friends to accomplish his fortune is the rest of the story.There is a quote that we all know very well which says 'Never judge a book by its cover' and it's a perfect match for this title, don't judge this movie after reading rating and reviews from movie database sites. It is better than what they have said, of course the theme was influenced by adult relationships, secret affair and sex. But the way it was handled was nice I mean I am saying it was not disturbing story on that topic.The movie had a fine cast, everyone was up to their best. The cinematography was fine, the costumes were very nice, of course performances were excellent and I still don't know what let the movie fall apart as far the critics concern. For me it was a fine piece of period drama with good story and presentation.