I saw a movie this week that’s worse than Alvin and the Chipmunks. And it stars three Oscar winners and is directed by an Oscar winner. What movie is this? The shockingly dull Charlie Wilson’s War. I haven’t struggled so much to get through a movie since M. Night Shymalan’s Lady in the Water, which came out way back in July of 2006. This is an awful, tired, bore of a movie. Thankfully it has a running time of about 90 minutes. If this movie had been Lord of the Rings length, I would’ve tried to hang myself from the theatre balcony.

I could try to explain the plot of the movie, but honestly, it will put you to sleep. I spent the first half hour watching this movie trying to figure out what was happening and also trying to find something to care about up there on the screen. It’s all based on a true story and it’s set in the 1980’s. Tom Hanks, who hits his third strike here after 2004’s creepy The Polar Express and 2006’s godawful The Da Vinci Code, is well-respected congressmen Charlie Wilson, who raises money to deliver weapons to members of Afghanistan to defeat Russians who have invaded their country. Julia Roberts plays a wealthy socialite who veers Charlie to the cause, and Philip Seymour Hoffman, who offers the film’s only real entertainment value, plays an eccentric CIA agent who befriends Charlie and joins the team.

How could this many talented people make a movie this bad? It’s got all the elements for a critically and financially successful movie. It’s a film about an important event in history. It’s directed by Mike Nichols, who started his career with Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and The Graduate in the 60’s and lately has done solid work like Closer and Angels in America. It stars Tom Hanks, one of the biggest movie stars in the world, and also one of the best actors (when the script suits him). He couldn’t be stopped in the 1990’s. A League of their Own, Philadelphia, Forrest Gump, Apollo 13, Saving Private Ryan. Just one great film after another. What happened, Tom? It also stars one of the biggest female film stars in the world, Julia Roberts, who I’ve always liked a lot when she’s paired with the right material (My Best Friend’s Wedding, Notting Hill, Erin Brockovich) but she is terrible in this. Like, really bad. Her distracting blonde wig doesn’t help.

I’m not done yet. The film also stars up-and-coming actresses Amy Adams (Enchanted) and Emily Blunt (The Devil Wears Prada) who are both severely under-used in nothing roles. And the film features a supporting turn from Philip Seymour Hoffman, one of our best actors working today. If you don’t believe me, check out either one of the other two films he has in theatres now, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead and The Savages, two extraordinary films that will both be going on my list for the top ten films of the year. I was hoping he could make it three for three, but unfortunately, this time, the movie gets away from him. Even Hoffman can’t save this one.

If this group of people had made pretty much any other movie, it would’ve been better and more entertaining. If this group of people had made Alvin and the Chipmunks, with Tom Hanks as Dave, Julia Roberts (sans blonde wig) as the love interest, and Philip Seymour Hoffman as a live-action Alvin, we could’ve had something. See? Just off the top of my head, I’m thinking of movies that would’ve had more entertainment value. I despised every minute watching this movie. I felt nothing for any characters at any point, and I was never engaged in any one scene. The movie just sits there like an inanimate object, waiting to die a slow death on DVD where it belongs. The movie went out of focus for a few seconds at one point half-way through. Good, I thought. Stay like that. Maybe it’ll hypnotize me and I’ll fall asleep.

After the disappointing war films of this fall, including the mediocre In the Valley of Elah, the abysmal Rendition, and the critically maligned Lions for Lambs (which I didn’t see), Charlie Wilson’s War should’ve been the film that broke the curse and delivered a film with entertainment value and a history lesson to learn from. It’s neither. This is no Apollo 13 or Erin Brockovich. It’s movie purgatory. A complete dead zone of banal behavior, annoying dialogue, bad accents, and one talky scene after another. If you had told me a few days ago that I would like Alvin and the Chipmunks more than the new Tom Hanks-Julia Roberts-Mike Nichols film, I would’ve beaten you over the head with a crow bar. Now I don’t have to. I’m shocked how much I loathed this movie. Even if you like the talent involved, don’t even bother. In the words of Cary Grant in Notorious…. “SKIP IT!”