The first two thirds of this film are excruciating torture. The dialogue was just a series of non sequiturs and banal small talk, and the direction was often choppy and amateurish. Take for example, the legendary opening dream sequence. Kubrick could have done it a hundred times better. I'd confess to being an Al Qaeda operative if I was forced to sit through this stinkbomb again. But sit through it once I did. I endured the whole miserable time thinking: it has to get good at some point, there has to be a payoff somewhere, surely my patience will be rewarded eventually. Because after all, this is one of the most worshiped and praise-lavished "masterpieces" in the history of cinema, right? Well, it never did justify it's classic status, but it at least got somewhat bearable in it's final third, where we finally start to get some mildly clever dialogue and watchable scenes. Take, for example, the harem dream sequence. This scene is modestly amusing. But it's hardly any better than what any modern-day hack could have come up with. For instance, imagine if the exact same scene (same direction, same dialogue) were from an Adam Sandler film instead of a Fellini one. Would anyone accuse it of "genius'? Of course not. Sandler fans would get a mild chuckle and the rest of us would yawn. So why are we to believe that it's so great here? In fact, what is the point of this film at all, other than pure masturbation for a narcissistic director? (no wonder film students and amateur directors love it) Fellini lets the cat out of the bag when he has Mastroianni utter this nugget of truth: "I've really got nothing to say. But I want to say it anyway." And that is this film in a nutshell. Which would be forgivable if Fellini could "say nothing" in an interesting or entertaining way. But he fails miserably even at that. note: For those of us who don't speak Italian, the film is doubly excrutiating because most of the scenes are so dense with dialogue (99% of it worthless) that you end up spending so much time reading the inane sub-titles you miss most of the visuals.