For all its grim 'n gritty reputation, there's actually not that much violence in the comic, and what violence there is gets invariably framed so as to sap its impact. So, if you look at the Comedian's death in the comic, while we're told he put up a fight, we only see him getting pummeled from the perspective of his attacker. This and other visual narrative tricks are crucial to the comic's critique of the genre, both grounding the violence of superhero fights and denying us their pleasure.
The movie, on the other hand, absolutely wallows in sensational violence and overactive sensation. Truly, this is a Watchmen for the Geoff Johns era.

Because every self-respecting comics or comics-related blog deserves its own Watchmen movie thread. The ever-astute Joe McCulloch (source of the quote above, in which I would probably swap Brad Meltzer for Geoff Johns) of Jog the Blog didn't much care for the movie. Neither did the Comics Reporter's Tom Spurgeon. Neither did I --  the idea that this was the Reader's Digest version of Watchmen seems pretty apt, and not in a good way. It was less a compelling adaption of the material and more, "Man, that was a pretty good book, huh? Let's act out some of our favorite scenes!"

On the other hand, Roger Ebert thought it was great. What about you?