YES, Appalling!
No place online is home to so many insipid and hateful morons, who try to pass off being educated and/or literate and FILM literate at that, (and despite all words they spew proving the contrary).
My theory that a new class of sub-intellect nerds are developing into the nastiest, cyber-world, subhuman presence, is very well supported at IMDB.
As I am not a nerd, I didn't come to this film because it was Mamet, and at the time of watching it I had actually, completely forgotten. And very quickly I turned to my girl and said - 'If this writer had any real value, his film within the film would be half decent and not just horrid, unwatchable and nothing more than stringing together bad clichés'. As further testament to my intelligence :), I was saying that in a language other than English, and didn't have the perfect word for STILTED!
All these retarded, pseudo nerds, lauding this film as though it entered brave, new territory. This kind of film has been made countless times, (self referential, de-constructing the industry, etc). And I, who in the past have been more interested in auteurs or writers, far more than actors - found the exact opposite here; I was attracted by the extremely strong cast, yet the writing & direction were as weak as it gets. This film couldn't have been killed any better than the way Mamet drags us along with its soulless carcass. I echo another post around here, that lists Hal Hartley - now HE is the king of making the most stilted dialogue work, NOT Mamet. Mamet fails miserably, and me and my girl lost more & more interest in this film, DESPITE the patience & open minds to persist!
Come at me with your best, insipid, (faux or pseudo) nerd, retard retort (retord would be a good word to amalgamate those :) - Just because your world must be as tepid as I can't imagine, that you must blow your loads over anything you believe to be 'smarter than thou', doesn't mean that the more intelligent critics of this film would watch or appreciate 'Twilight' or 'ConAir' - however, those films would not need many qualities to Eclipse this utter, stilted trash.
Good day, retord.