There’s a scene where the party boat runs out of gas, the lights go off, and the guests enter the hotel, having waded ashore. It’s sort of cute, but what’s it got to do with the movie? It advances neither the plot nor the characters. A good editor would have cut it out, except that without such scenes, little would be left. Cute bits here and there, separated by much longeur, was the essence of this magic-less movie. Pleasant enough to watch, thanks to its two female stars, the film ultimately left a sour aftertaste, with George Clooney’s trademark insouciance jarring horribly with the plights of the real-world workers he was assigned to fire. The concept of outsourcing layoffs fell just as flat as Ryan Bingham’s “backpack” speech. Even the opening credits were the clunkiest I’ve seen this year.

As a lover of movies on sports and racial equality, I expected this to be an easy winner. Instead, I found the sports incomprehensible and the race relations so clichéd that I left wondering how a movie about Nelson Mandela could be so uninspiring. Morgan Freeman was impeccable, if boring, but Matt Damon was a white hole that sucked all the energy out of his scenes. The scriptwriters felt it necessary to have government advisers explain the World Cup draw to Mandela, but no one bothered to explain any rugby rules to us, leaving us to wonder when a team gets to kick a field goal, which was the only way, and a boring way at that, that any points got scored in the “climactic” match. Clint Eastwood has made good films and bad films, as the Iwo Jima duo showed; unfortunately, this one was on a par with Gran Torino.

Absurd from start to finish, this disaster film contained not a single enjoyable scene, and it was barely kept afloat by its snippets of memorable, albeit too predictable, ‘60s music. It was especially disappointing coming from Richard Curtis, who contributed to such prior favorites as Love, Actually, Notting Hill and Four Weddings and a Funeral. If it was meant as a spoof, for which there was no evidence, then the filmic allusions at the conclusion to the Titanic and Dunkirk were notably tasteless.

A Rorschach blot of a movie: Is the depiction of Precious’s life courageous or demeaning? Is she a winner, for overcoming obstacles, or still a loser, facing life as a grotesquely overweight HIV-positive unwed mother of two (one with Down’s Syndrome)? Is her rescue by a special-ed teacher thrilling because it is so unique, or depressing, because it is so unique? Does the welfare system foster successes, like Precious, or utterly dependent failures, like her mother? The ambiguity it creates is a mark of how well-made the movie is. It wasn’t all that fun to watch, but I detected no false notes, and the acting was superb. Paula Patton was too good to be true, but the visual relief she provided was certainly welcome.

You don’t have to be an admirer of Michael Jackson or his music – and I am neither – to be awed and amazed at the level of professionalism that was going into his comeback concert, and has now been preserved in this skillful film by concert director Kenny Ortega. If you thought MJ weird before you saw this – and I did – nothing here will change your opinion, and that is one of the film’s strengths. It doesn’t appear to sugarcoat, or go out of its way to humanize Michael, whose vocabulary seems limited to “God bless you.” Still, the brilliance of the background dancers, backup singers, musicians, choreographer, lighting director, costume designer, filmmakers who wend their talents in support of Michael’s trademark robotic dance moves, more craft than art, is blinding. Thinking only of Prince, for one, Michael’s “King of Pop” moniker seems wildly hyperbolic, but this would have been one awesome concert experience, and seeing it backstage, like this, probably gives it an approachability that makes it more endearing than the finished product we will, sadly, never see.