From my blog:
After a while of watching many and varied films using my Unlimited card, there had to be a clanger in the end. Stand up and take a bow, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. A bold, visual movie that is let down slightly by being unutterable rubbish. To paraphrase a paraphrase, it's rare to encounter a movie as aggressive in its ridiculousness as Perfume: TSOAM. So, credit where credit is due: This is an extremely ambitious, terrible film. Whilst visually magnificent, the movie is crushingly stupid on almost every conceivable level. Like Lord of the Rings, it was often said that the book was "unfilmable". Unlike Lord of the Rings, after seeing this mess, I'm pretty sure they were right.
Let's set aside the visuals (did I mention... beautiful?), and look at the acting (Ben Whishaw delivered his lines with all the convincing subtlety of Hayden Christianson on a particularly wooden day), and single out poor Dustin Hoffman - who, without a director worth his salt, manages to play an aging Italian perfumier as - well - Dustin Hoffman - punctuating otherwise nasal jewish/LA dialogue with "mama mia" to as if to add insult to woefully miscast injury.
By the time two hours or my life has gone by the frankly retarded finale rolls around, I thought I might be hallucinating from mind-addling boredom. I'm sure in the novel there are subtleties in Grenouille's slide into insanity, but this is filmed in the such a stupidly flat, matter-of-fact manner that even John Hurt's illustrious tones could not save if from guffaws of hateful derision.
I guess some things should be left on the page.
Wish I'd stayed home and de-scaled the kettle.
You should be a film critic! And if you are already, keep up the good work! 
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