'Gods of Egypt' plagued with poor plotting, cheesy effects

Could the timing be any worse for a movie with a diversity problem as extensive as "Gods of Egypt"? Only two days before #OscarsSoWhite Sunday, a movie comes out set in ancient Egypt and starring white actors from Australia, Scotland and Denmark.

It's worth noting that both Lionsgate and director Alex Proyas apologized back in November, saying their casting choices should have been more diverse. They deserve credit for that, but it turns out they had even more to apologize for. Because "Gods of Egypt" is bad. The plot is confusing, yet boring. The visuals look expensive, yet cheesily fake. And the performances are merely serviceable.

We begin, as we said, in ancient Egypt - but in this Egypt, gods live among the mortals (and in one case, in outer space). The gods look just like the humans, only they're much taller, and in really good shape, too - all those centuries in the gym, probably.

We're told in a voice-over that the good god Osiris has decided to crown his son Horus (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) king. A vast crowd assembles for the coronation. But suddenly here comes Horus' uncle Set, the god of darkness (Gerard Butler, boldly making the case that Egyptian deities had strong Scottish accents). Set thinks he should be king so he kills Osiris and tears out Horus' eyes.

A dark period ensues for both gods and mortals. But there are only two mortals we're supposed to care about: Bek (Brenton Thwaites) and Zaya (Courtney Eaton), an extremely attractive young couple.

Zaya suggests that Bek, a talented thief, should steal Horus' eyes, now glowing jewels being stored in a supersecret vault. The idea is to return them to Horus, so he can fight back and retake the throne. Bek and Horus become sort of a god-mortal buddy team, each with his own urgent agenda.

Then, suddenly, they're in outer space! On a space ship! We think! But we can't promise!

This is where Ra (Geoffrey Rush), the sun deity and grandfather of Horus, lives, and occasionally bursts into flames. Rush is entertaining even when you're not quite sure you're supposed to be laughing. This is actually an issue with much of the screenplay by Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless: We're always wondering if it's silly and self-aware, or just plain silly.

It's obvious the filmmakers were gunning for a sequel here. But this bloated enterprise is so tiresome by the end, it seems more likely headed for a long rest somewhere in the cinematic afterlife.