One person's hard going is another's "gee whiz" retro homage. A fun film; while very hokey at times, it has its heart is in the right place, and it has its fans. A lot of people wrote it off as a failed experiment, but given almost all films today are 90% CGI, that's not really true. Sin City, for example,a very similar film stylisitically, came out the next year.

And as someone pointed out on IMDb, watching this film in black & white (as Conran intended) makes it a different and vastly improved experience. Edward Shearmur's score is excellent, too.