You might as well face facts. Pretty much everyone is going to be making jokes at the expense of Dr. Manhattan’s full-frontal nudity in Watchmen for at least the next week. Maybe two. If you can last that long, it’s probably the last you’ll hear about it.

Chalk it up to immaturity, I suppose. But I think there is something inherently comical about the nude male form. It’s so… inelegant. It deserves to be made fun of. Just… not when I’m around. I’m very self-conscious.

Sidebar: Fart jokes? Still funny.

So, let’s not waste anymore time, shall we? Watchmen. I saw it this weekend. What did I think about it?

I will admit to going into this movie with my expectations set very low. I can say I walked away having my expectations met. That’s a left-handed compliment. But, in the end, just another way to say that the movie was what I expected it to be. They didn’t completely ruin Watchmen, but they didn’t really do much better than the graphic novel. So, ultimately, I’m left looking back on it and asking “What’s the point?”

There are several things that Watchmen does well. Director Zack Snyder (stylist though he may be) does a good job of capturing the details and he knows which details are important.

I was particularly impressed by his interpretation of Dr. Manhattan. Much more than a big naked blue guy – in close-up, Snyder’s Manhattan looks like a an opaque, idealized construct of a man containing vast energies. You can see traces of it swirling and darting about beneath his skin. The eyes, instead of a hollow white, looked like a gentling expanding starburst.

And, of course, Rorschach’s shifting inkblot mask came off without a hitch.

David Hayter’s screenplay is economical while retaining the key elements that move the plot forward. I was surprised how satisfied I was with his simple solution to “the squid problem” in the climax of the movie.

I thought the performances and casting, for the most part, were excellent. Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach is a snarling, sinewy standout (even though I had been bothered by his gravely, apparent graduation from The Christian Bale School of Superhero Voices in the trailer).

Billy Cruddup does a good job as Dr. Manhattan. Emoting as through a digital character is no easy task, but he delivered a palpable sense of Dr. Manhattan’s detachment from humanity while hinting at the greater being he had evolved into. He didn’t sound like I imagined Dr. Manhattan to sound like at first (he came off a little too calm, a little too Zen), but now I can’t imagine him sounding any other way.

I was even impressed by Patrick Wilson as Nite Owl II. Given the unenviable task of playing a middle-aged sad sack, Wilson keeps the insanity around him tethered to the ground and plays the role with conviction.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan was also well-cast as The Comedian.

So if the movie looks right, sounds right and is performed correctly, what’s the problem?

It’s tough to put my finger on, but I think Snyder is so slavish to the source material, he can’t make it his own. I think that’s why I found myself aligned with Tom Charity’s review over at CNN.

To quote Charity, “‘Visionary’ director Zack Snyder, as the marketing would have it, has filmed Alan Moore’s ‘unfilmable’ graphic novel by treating the comic book panels as his storyboard and his Bible.

Doesn’t it bother anyone that this is about as far from the definition of ‘visionary’ as it’s possible to get?

The visionary sees what others do not see. Snyder — whose previous films were a remake (Dawn of the Dead) and another scrupulously faithful comic book adaptation (300) — is more in the line of a fancy photocopier, duplicating other artists’ imagery with a forger’s intensity.

A visionary transforms the world. Snyder slavishly transcribes what’s set down 5 inches in front of his face.”

Snyder’s “vision” is so faithful to the graphic novel, I spent most of the movie going “Okay, that looked a lot like the graphic novel. What’s the next scene they’re going to do? Will it also look as much like the graphic novel? I’m gonna look really closely at the details.”

What happens is that you’re not focused on the movie. Snyder’s attention to detail is his gift and his curse. What he puts on screen is intrinsically distracting because he undermines the story with his visuals in a “lookit what I can do!” kind of way. The images and the story never work in concert. To me, his is now officially the Michael Bay of comic book movies.

I also take issue with the music selection in the film. It seems every transition into any new scene was punctuated by some iconic “song of the era” to let you know exactly when and where you were. Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Sound Of Silence,” KC & The Sunshine Band, “I’m Your Boogie Man,” Nena’s “99 Luftballons.” Each song selection was more clumsy and stupid than the last. None more so than the amped up cover of Dylan’s “Desolation Row” by My Chemical Romance.

Supercharged with punk vitriol as it stampedes over the closing credits, it is the exact WRONG mood to strike after the grim conclusion. I left the theater repulsed by the crass commercialism of it. I usually don’t pay attention to the music in movies all that closely, but if there was any film that could have benefited from a brooding, ominous orchestral score, Watchmen would be it.

Beyond that, my complaints are middling. I wasn’t impressed by either Carla Gugino or Malin Akerman as Silk Spectre and Silk Spectre II, respectively. I hate to single them out since I applauded the performances of the men so much. But Gugino was way over the top and arch while Akerman simply doesn’t have the chops.

Okay, in all fairness, Matthew Goode as Ozymandias was a foppish, lazy-eyed bore.

I was annoyed at how the fight scenes were staged. The prison riot was well done, but the climatic showdown in Antarctica was stupid (Fight! Talk! Fight! Talk!)

Also, when Dr. Manhattan is the only hero in the movie with superpowers, it makes no sense when other characters are able to run vertically up towers, punch through walls and kick people across a room. Each punch landing with a booming “THUD!” and bone-cracking revelry.

That’s another thing. Snyder is a little too in love with his vision of violence. A woman is shot through the shin, a thug’s elbow is bent backwards, bones jutting from his forearm, Dr. Manhattan causes a couple of gangsters to explode, their sticky entrails dangling from the ceiling. It’s brutish and unnecessary.

And before I forget… Sndyer’s signature move — the slow motion. Call my a cynic, but Watchmen probably would have been 30 minutes shorter if it had run in real time. To go back to Tom Charity’s point about visionary directing, The Wachowski’s “bullet time,” this is not.

I will freely admit to the possibility that I walked into Watchmen expecting to hate it, but I claim self-preservation. Watchmen is simply too important to be taken lightly and, frankly, I don’t think Snyder was the right man for the job.

Part of me feels like I need to see the movie a second time to judge it more fairly. Maybe the second time around I won’t be distracted by the expectation of what’s next or how faithfully it’s translated to the screen and I can just sit back and enjoy it. Maybe I can remove my fanboy filter and look at it as the movie it wants to be.

But at the same time I don’t feel compelled to run out and buy a ticket. Watchmen is kind of an ugly movie in spirit and it seems to embrace that ugliness for all the wrong reasons. Because of that, the movie isn’t easy to like. And again, you’re left asking yourself “What’s the point?”