RHYMES WITH GRIT

Save your money. TRUE GRIT is excruciating. If you go to movies wanting someone to identify with or root for, know this before you buy your ticket: there is not a single likable character in the lot.  

Jeff Bridges, last heard dueting with the Cookie Monster on "SNL" and eloquently shilling Hyundai Sonata's "14-step electro charged paint roto dip", was so garbled he cried out for sub-titles. A cute drunk? Hardly. I wanted to smack his pickled Rooster Cogburn until he puked up an intelligible sentence. 

Teenybopper Hailee Steinfeld was the opposite--the braided, pouty chick incarnation of the officious Mr. Peabody. Had I been an extra on the flick, I'd have broken rank and strung up her annoying, pompous brat from the highest branch of the tallest tree in the first half hour.  

I'm not even going to get into how unbelievably creepy it was that writer-directors Joel and Ethan Coen so often shot the teenage Steinfeld in close-up with parted lips. It was as if they were inviting the adult male gaze to imagine... She was 13 then, gentlemen. THIRTEEN.

Matt Damon, verging on likable as a Texas Ranger, was unfortunately played for a fool, the way the bullies at school try to make the normal, nice kid seem like he's weird and wrong.

At a loss for human kinship, I rooted for the horses. Big mistake. Let's just say those with a deep love of all things equine would be wise to avoid TRUE GRIT. Rent SECRETARIAT or SEABISCUIT for happy endings.

On the plus side, there is no fear whatsoever that Bridges will use GRIT to snag the Oscar away from Colin Firth this year as he did last.