The script would have made the best pyre

Note to anyone who thinks that Brad Pitt ruins “Troy”: He ain’t what’s wrong with this movie.

“Troy” has to be one of the worst conceived films ever to cost $200 million. Check that. Put a period after the word ever. If Homer were still alive, he’d be looking for an entertainment lawyer. Since he’s been dead for the better part of 2,700 years (or maybe even longer; no one seems to know for sure), he’s going to need a pretty sharp lawyer. Maybe even Johnnie Cochran.

But even O.J.’s savior would have trouble salvaging something from the ridiculous plot that director Wolfgang Petersen inherited. “Troy” screenwriter David Benioff apparently missed his classics class in college. Hell, he must not even have read the Classics Comics version of Homer’s epic poem “The Iliad.” Benioff pared the 10-year war between Greece and Troy down to a couple of weekends. Homer’s Achilles is a secondary character with an ego as big as Harvey Weinstein’s, but Benioff made him the star. Benioff completely eliminated the need for Aeschylus to have ever written his study of the Greek king Agamemnon . Worst of all, he turned one of the great works of world literature into a couple of love stories with less emotional fire than a Steve Reeves toga party.

Yet let’s forget the sources of this story and Benioff’s many inaccuracies. Judged even by modern standards, “Troy” has less to say of importance than a Cliff’s Notes study guide. With nothing to follow except such lame dialogue as “No son of Troy will ever submit to a foreign ruler!” (Eric Bana’s Hector to Brian Cox’s Agamemnon), which earns the clever reply, “Then every son of Troy shall die,” director Petersen has little to do but fill the screen with closeups of Saffron Burrows (Andromache) and Orlando Bloom (Paris) and Diane Kruger (Helen) and especially rheumy-eyed Peter O’Toole (Troy’s King Priam). He resorts to showing more funeral pyres than could possibly ever be held in, yes, a DESERT BEACH LAND WITHOUT TREES. With nearly three hours of running time to fill, he uses a sense of pacing that moves slower than the iceberg that sank the Titanic.

If anything, the impressively abbed Pitt is the single best thing about “Troy.” Sure, his fighting moves seem more Jackie Chan than Alexander the Great, but he actually is more sexually alluring than Krueger’s Helen (at least he drew more whistles from the audience I sat among). In fact, all those critics taking unfair shots at him better watch out. Having earned $20 million to do Petersen’s film, Pitt might decide to spend some of that loot to get a bit of legal payback. With that much in the bank, he could almost afford Johnnie Cochran.

If Homer doesn’t come back from the dead and hire him first.