I totally agree with you. I think most of the times the Love It Or Hate It trope aplies is for this reason. I've seen/read a lot of movies/series/books/comics that I didn't hate by themselves, simply thought they were bland and forgettable even when they had some enjoyable elements. But then I began to read reviews by fans and/or statements by the authors implying they were masterpieces, deep and full of symbolism, and I was basicaly a moron for "not getting" them. And only then was I pushed to the "hate" side, because then it wasn't only a bland movie, it was bland and pretentious. The thing is, it wasn't so much to get in the first place. Its not so difficult to see the three levels of reality and the way events in one of them map in the other two, its not so difficult to catch the aesop, and its not so dificult to see the atempt at satire. I got your movie perfectly and found what I got lacking.
I got the impression that Snyder did try to make it deep but being as inept as he is and being caught in the (to my mind) justified criticism he did an Ass Pull and started saying that it's poking fun. If straight, almost frigid women can see that the girls are shown in a highly sexualized way then Snyder's 'you see sex because you want to and you should be ashamed of yourselves' line is just cowardice, he doesn't have the balls to admit that he made a bad film or that his fetishes and kinks ended up looking like paedophilia on the screen.
As a commentator on another review stated, the flick jumps up and down screaming 'Look at me! I'm deep and symbolic!' so turning off your brain and enjoying it as senseless candy is really difficult.
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A gamer's bad trip
As the title says, that's how I felt about the "dream world" parts. The main plot point is an inexplicable Fetch Quest for completely arbitrary items, which could easily be emulated by much more common ones, like a box of matches from the kitchen instead of the mayor's ornate lighter, but I guess the developers didn't think about that. It's even lampshaded with the cook's knife. The fantasy worlds caused by Baby Doll's dances are painfully devoid of any creativity. And I'm not talking just about the parts lifted from Peter Jackson. They all mash-ups of general themes we've seen hundreds if not thousands of times. And the action is just grind. Luckily, we didn't get an Escort Mission in a sewer.
But maybe I shouldn't look at the movie from that perspective. After all, the blandness is fully self-aware and just a brilliant lampshade of geek entertainment. And the movie has an important Aesop for us. Which is: only you control your life. You are the one who defines your strengths and fears. Only you can set yourself free.
Um, yes I got that. It didn't require much thinking. In fact, the movie flat out tells us that. Repeatedly. And it's not like it's the first work to come up with that.
So, how do the protagonists get around to controlling their lives?
By escaping into fantasies, of course.
Well, I have years and years of experience in that. It never really worked that way. So I'm gonna call this a bit of false advertising.
Of course, the movie's supposed to be so much more than that. But I don't buy it. Zack Snyder wanted to make a satire on geek media or something, so he went for the most primitive way of doing one — to play all the parodied tropes completely straight, but it's A-OK, because we lampshade that we do it. It's no longer just bad writing — since the creator know it is, it suddenly turns... good?
Well, hell no, it doesn't. And just because you say you wanted to put a deep meaning in it doesn't mean it's actually there.
As you can tell from the above rant, I didn't enjoy the movie. In itself it's just bland, but it's the pretentiousness that is plain offensive. Even more so since the default response from Snyder (and the fans, so it seems) to those who didn't like it is "you're just too dense to get it".
Again, it's not as if I didn't hear that one before.