Million dollar rip-off

I don't like getting jerked around, by people or movies. After seeing Million Dollar Baby tonight, I feel like I've been victimized by both. Critics are praising it up one side and down the other, and SI tried to claim this week that it was the greatest boxing movie ever. (No, sorry, not even close.) It was ... not good. I won't ruin the ending, but I haven't felt so blatantly and shamelessly played since the cheap ending of Saving Private Ryan. The first half of the movie, I grant you, showed promise: Good boxing scenes, Clint was cranky, Morgan was understanding, and Swank didn't annoy me too much with her "I come from trash" crap. And then the movie lands, I concede, a quite effective punch. Tragically, after they punch you and you're down, they keep coming after you. And that's when they lose you. Pam was laughing by this point, at the sheer over-the-top melodrama of it all. I was crying, but I was really pissed that I was crying, because they were cheap tears and this movie could have been better than that. Maybe we're all so desperately starved for good movies that we'll grasp at anything, but I'm not biting on this one.