Critics Slam New Angelina Jolie & Brad Pitt Film

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s first movie together since Mr & Mrs Smith, the movie that they hooked up on, is getting a bit of a pounding by the critics.

Dubbed a ‘vanity project’ for the nearest thing Hollywood has to a Royal family, By The Sea was directed by the couple, written by the couple and stars the couple in the leading roles.

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The action, which was shot in Malta, revolves around a writer and his once famous actress wife, whose relationship is breaking apart, both main characters self-medicating their ennui with either alcohol or pills.

They then encounter a honeymooning couple at their lavish hotel.

But the main issue appears to be a lack of any action, with the movie now languishing with a lowly 27% "fresh" rating on reviews aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes.

Veteran critic Richard Roeper at the Chicago Sun-Times called it "awfully pretty and mostly dreadful".

"Jolie Pitt delivers some of the more uninspired work of her career, veering from making kitten-like whimpers when she’s sad to turning on the waterworks far too many times,” he continues.

"With his little porkpie hats and his cheesy ’70s ‘stache and his drunken antics, Pitt has a few choice moments, but like everyone else in this film, he’s sunk by the words he has to say and the long, long, LONG stretches where nothing much of anything happens.”

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“What is wrong with these dreary people?” asks Joe Morgenstern in the Wall Street Journal.

Todd McCarthy in The Hollywood Reporter is equally damning, adding: “This languid piece of would-be art cinema will prove once again that even the biggest names in the world won’t draw an audience to something that, in and of itself, has no reason for being.”

In the Boston Globe, Ty Burr says: “By the Sea may simply exist as a movie for Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt to watch. It’s two hours of vacation, voyeurism, and celebrity marriage therapy, and you and I aren’t actually invited.”

The praise, where it’s found, is only feint.

Nigel M. Smith in The Guardian said: “By the Sea’s uncompromising nature is its most admirable asset. It’s a vanity project that’s difficult to love, but alluring to unpack.”

Though the New Yorker’s Richard Brody offers: “By the Sea is far from a perfect work, even far from a great one; but it’s a distinctive one; it’s a composed movie, not mere pictures of actors acting, which already puts it far ahead of many of the year’s presumptive Oscarizables.”

Rebecca Keegan in the Los Angeles Times finds that 'as a writer, Jolie Pitt is better at ideas than dialogue, much of which is leaden here. But the characters’ behaviours feel true’.

Whether Pitt and Jolie can succeed in getting folks through the door to see it is another matter entirely.

It’s due out in Australia on November 26.

Ben Arnold writes for Yahoo Movies UK