By Sean O’Driscoll 

Colin Farrell’s new film Alexander has bombed at the box office after a massive publicity campaign failed to get past the film’s cheesy dialogue and tired storyline. 

The film, which was roasted by the critics upon its release last week, cost at least $150 million to make but made just $13.5 in the crucial first three days of its release. 

Reviewers almost universally panned the film as dull and unconvincing. 

An Associated Press journalist, writing for The New York Times, said that the film was so bad he couldn’t even find its awfulness amusing. 

“We’re not just talking kitschy, B-movie bad. At least that would have been fun. We’ll talking all-out, big-budget-bomb bad,” he wrote. 

Many critics made fun of Colin Farrell’s long, flowing Baywatch-style blond hair. 

“Alexander was sporting a dreadful blond pageboy and a micro-mini toga while exchanging come-hither looks with his mascara-loving childhood pal,” wrote the New York Post, which found the film “a surprisingly old-fashioned and plodding epic by the once-maverick Stone.”

The Boston Globe opened its review with the line, “The new Oliver Stone movie Alexander is full of brilliant highlights, and they’re all in Colin Farrell’s hair.”

The Globe added that Farrell’s hair looked like that the type of hair that might be worn by Camaro sports car owners, before noting, “In those salon-treated locks, you can see the movie that Alexander is — long and unruly — and the one that it longs to be — layered and unforgettable.”

The Seattle Times ran with the headline “Alexander the Mediocre,” while the Canadian Globe and Mail used the opening line: “Call it Alexander the Grate, because, over the marathon of its three-hour running time, this wonky epic really does get on your nerves.”

The reaction among the public in New York has not been promising either. At a mixed press and public screening in Manhattan, the audience erupted in laughter during what was supposed to be one of the most touching moments of the film, when Farrell’s Alexander summed up his military career as his lover, Hephaistion, passes away in a bed behind him. 

The film, which also stars Angelina Jolie, Anthony Hopkins and Val Kilmer, has many Irish supporting actors, hired to blend with Colin Farrell’s Dublin accent, which he decided not to alter for the film.

Mick Lally, better known as Miley from former RTE series Glenroe plays a trader who sells the young Alexander his battle horse. 

Jonathan Rhys Meyers plays Alexander’s successor, Cassandra, and Dublin theater actress Fiona O’Shaughnessy plays a nurse.

The Irish touch may help in Europe, but hasn’t done much for the film here. It made $21.6 from Thanksgiving Eve to the following Sunday. 

Intermedia Films, which produced the film, had hoped that the film would take at least $25 million.

Intermedia CEO Moritz Borman said Alexander’s results “could have been better” but said the film would do better in Europe.

He blamed several factors, including the lengthy running time and “mixed” reviews. He predicted the film would do well globally, and had done better in Canada than it had in the U.S. 

It’s possible that the film’s accurate depiction of Alexander the Great as bisexual, as well as its heavy parallels with U.S. involvement in Iraq, may have hurt the U.S. box office, particularly in heavily Republican states. 

The critics’ mauling is also very bad news for Warner Brothers, which paid Intermedia $35 million for the North American rights to the film.