Sucking "The Spirit" Out of Will Eisner's Vision

Did you manage to catch a viewing of "Watchmen" while on Spring Break? If you're a Stevens student, that should be an automatic "yes." While I would love to sit down and dissect the ups and downs of that brilliant movie, this week it is my unfortunate privilege to review a different comic book movie: "The Spirit."
I wish "The Spirit" was half as awesome as Watchmen, but the two simply cannot be compared. "The Spirit" is Frank Miller's creative reinterpretation of Will Eisner's post-WWII comic about an ex-detective named Danny Colt who returns from the dead as the superhero The Spirit (Gabriel Macht). The Spirit seems to be some sort of weird Batman spin-off, except for the fact that he walks around in broad daylight and his closest friend is a cat.
"The Spirit" starts in the Central City mud flats where Sand Saref (a person, not the Microsoft Word font) is taking her usual daily mud bath. She stumbles upon two ancient treasures lying around in the mud, because as Zelda games have taught us, ancient treasure is always lying around in the mud waiting to be found. In one of the chests is the treasure of the mythical Argonauts (think Greek mythology), an archaeological discovery which in itself would make Holy Grail enthusiasts squeal like schoolgirls. This is peanuts, however, in comparison to the other treasure, which grants the user eternal life.
However, just as Sand is clicking her heels in delight over her newfound treasure, The Spirit's arch nemesis, The Octopus (Samuel L. Jackson), shows up to make his claim on her find. A struggle ensues, and Sand winds up with the elixir while The Octopus manages to get the treasure. Sounds like Sand is the victor, correct? Wrong! The vain girl only seems to want to the riches of the treasure. From there on out the plot zig-zags between odd flashbacks and incomprehensible plot development, though we do get to see Samuel L. Jackson dressed up as a samurai, a mad scientist, and a Nazi to boot.
To be honest, it's tough to tell whether Frank Miller intended to take this move seriously or not. One half of the movie is what I would could a "parody of slapstick" where the actors literally bash each other over the head with toilets (as Samuel L. Jackson tells The Spirit, "toilets are always funny"). The other half has a dead set film-noir feel that has the same emotional impact of a bunch of third graders putting on a production of "Romeo and Juliet."
So what the heck is going on here? Mad scientists? The secret to eternal life? Is this movie a parody of the film-noir style, or a serious recreation of a classic comic book? It's like a movie with multiple-personality disorder, and it has no clue which direction to go in so it simply stays running in circles. The movie has a serious pacing problem, which is an achievement in itself because there's not much plot to run on to begin with. All in all, it feels like the writers were so ashamed of their work they gave up and started to make fun of their own movie halfway through in order to save some face.
To someone, somewhere out there, The Spirit must make some sort of sense. I ask of them now to do me a service and explain this movie to me. Is there some trick to understanding the movie? Is there a secret decoder ring that goes with the movie that I did not manage to receive in the mail? Perhaps there's a light filter in Photoshop which will reveal secret messages that explain the movie. Until someone comes up with an explanation, the greatest entertainment you will gain from this movie is laughing at how horrifically bad this move gets.