Has anyone found a positive review of Chapter 27

This is amazing....in a world full of varying opinions, we may have found something all the critics can agree on....Chapter 27 just plain SUCKS.

This review was just found on Cinematical.com, read, smile and enjoy!!!

I hate to borrow material from another film critic, but a colleague of mine offered the following words after we finished watching Chapter 27: "It's like a feature-length version of De Niro's 'You talkin' to me' speech from Taxi Driver -- only without Scorsese, Schrader or De Niro." I repeat that sentence because it perfectly encapsulates my own opinion on the deadly dull and seriously dreary Chapter 27, a movie that promises to offer some insight into why Mark David Chapman, on one chilly night in 1980, shot the beloved John Lennon to death. But after 90-some minutes of J.P. Schaefer's writing/directing debut, I was no closer to understanding Chapman's motivations than I was 90 minutes earlier. I know it has something to do with J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, but any other specifics are lost beneath waves of babble, tedium and pretense.

It just keeps getting better.....read on.

Lead actor Jared Leto earned himself a producer's credit on Chapter 27, and it's blatantly obvious from the first few frames of the flick that the young actor really, ahem, beefed up for the role. And Leto wants you to know it, which is why we see Chapman parading around in his tighty-whities for two or three scenes. Jared might as well look directly into the camera lens and scream "Look how much weight I gained for this role!" To make matters worse, Leto (who, to be fair, has done some excellent work in movies like Panic Room, American Psycho and Requiem for a Dream) opts to brandish a rather nasally high-pitched squeak of a voice, which makes Chapter 27 feel like a straight-faced parody of Capote. And I don't think that's what Leto and Company were going for.

So the bulk of the flick sees Leto as Chapman walking through the park, lazing in hotel rooms and standing around outside John Lennon's apartment building, which is where he occasionally stops to talk with other fans -- but mostly he just wanders around while his voice-over narration rambles on about Holden Caulfield blah blah and John Lennon yadda yadda. It's drier than burnt toast and about as tasty. Popping up randomly (and to no discernible effect, really) in front of the apartment building are Jude (Lindsay Lohan) and Paul (Judah Friedlander), but aside from a few brief volleys of vapid chit-chat with the eventual murderer, they sure don't do a whole heckuva lot. (For the record, Friedlander delivers the only interesting line in the whole movie while Lohan wisely underplays her skimpily-written role.)

On the whole Chapter 27 feels like thirty pages of script in a 90-minute frame, and a vanity project for an actor willing to go the extra distance even if the screenplay doesn't really warrant all the effort. I was hoping to gain some insight as to who Mark Chapman actually was, and why he committed such a horrible crime; I walked out of Chapter 27 still wondering who the guy was -- and why the hell he liked Catcher in the Rye so damn much

VARIETY - Every Executive working in film distribution read this one..
Thanks Don "THE MAN" Murphy

"Chapter 27" peers into the mind of a real-life, insane killer and finds almost nothing of interest. In order to play John Lennon's assassin Mark David Chapman, actor Jared Leto gained some 70 pounds. Seemingly following his lead, the pic itself is heavy, lethargic, and exasperating. Whether this is due to the producer-star or due to debuting writer-director Jarrett Schaefer -- or both -- this dramatization of Chapman's days in New York City leading up to the shooting yields little insight or entertainment value. Despite the presence of Lindsay Lohan (in a thankless support role), theatrical success looks about as likely as a 21st-century Beatles reunion.

Flying in from his Hawaii home, the creepy, awkward Chapman installs himself in a YMCA, then a Sheraton, spending most of his time hanging out in front of the fabled Dakota building hoping to get an autograph from resident Lennon. But since he's brought a handgun, he presumably has a darker agenda from the start.

His repetitive verbal and voiceover ramblings show his obsessions with the Beatles and "Catcher in the Rye." He seems to think he's Holden Caulfield, sworn to avenge himself on all the "phonies" of the world, including ex-Beatle Lennon.

But since there's no background given in screenplay (a brief conversation with his unseen wife back home is the only clue to his prior life), protag's motivations are left blank.

Instead, pic gives a whopping dose of Leto with a black dye-job, pasty skin, glasses and double chin, whisper-talking in a rather actorish way, finding many excuses to doff his shirt so aud can appreciate his "Raging Bull"-style sacrifice for art. Chapman emerges more boring and irksome than scary.

Chapman meets Jude (Lohan), a local who also spends time hovering outside the Dakota, hoping for a glimpse of or word with her idol. As played in Lohan's usual likeable, naturalistic style, it strains credibility that this normal young woman would spend even a minute befriending such an obvious weirdo.

Though preem screening clocked in 16 minutes shorter than run-time given in Sundance program, "Chapter 27" still feels low on incident and high in tedium, with ideas beginning to repeat themselves halfway through. On rare occasions when something does happen -- notably when Chapman hires a prostitute -- it's a terribly obvious stab at pathos or menace.

Brief news clips reporting Lennon's death and the widespread public mourning provide some respite from pic's unrewardingly narrow focus.

While this sort of thing has certainly been done well before --"Taxi Driver" being the definitive example -- Leto and Schaefer haven't found a way of making their subject's mental illness compelling.

Feature is pro but uninspired in all departments, with Anthony Marinelli's competent but off-mark orchestral score just one more way in which "Chapter" fails to lend a seemingly sure-shot story any distinctive personality or drive.