Went to see this film last week sometime for Tx's birthday.
People are right generally in what they say about it.
I've read and enjoyed the book and so found the film disappointing.
It always it.
But, being slightly more objective than that (I can accept that it's a different interpretation of the story and it has to work on a different level etc etc), I don't think it was even desperately well made and really 'dumbed down' for a wider audience.
Started off well enough - very graphic birth scene! Perhaps a little too much and set Tx off on the wrong foot to enjoy the rest of the film.
But it too quickly gets really corny and cringe-making once Grenouille starts on his killing spree in Grasse.
Before that, Dustin Hoffman is OTT and caricatures M. Baldini rather too much.
Alan Rickman is very good at being Alan Rickman.
It's sinister and beautifully shot, but these little suspense.
Where it starts to go wrong is in the depiction of the girl's bvodies once they have been killed. I don't really see how or why G would have moved them all BACK to the place he killed them. Or was that just so the director could have some dramatic nudes?
The scene where G 'smells' Laura and her father miles ahead on horseback is quite ridiculously bad CG, and then I lost patience with it during the orgy scene.
It's MUCH too slow and I felt embarrassed for the director watching it. It goes on for EVER and really adds nothing to the film, to the point where it actually detracts from it.

And that weird retro scene at the beginning, where G is led from his cell to be read his sentence in front of the jeering crowd?? It doesn't even happen like that later on, so the point is what exactly?

Perhaps I expect too much.

Perhaps this is why I don't go to the cinema very often.

One day, someone wiull see the advantage of making a film or a TV programme that is brave enough to expect that its audience at least have a brain cell EACH...