Thanks to a comment by ace108, I think I now understand what my problem was with the movie. here is what I just responded to him...
"This is the best response! You solved the mystery for me. I actually understand the huge gap between my perception and others. I am a total geek. I know the story of Wonder Woman very well. So the entire beginning was very boring for me. That set the tone for the rest of the movie. However, if you didn't know the story very well, the beginning was interesting. So if you were interested in the first 30 minutes, you were in a much better mood than I was for the rest of the movie.
I now see why there are so many positive reviews. For many people, this was all very new and exciting. For me, it was the 100th time I was seeing/reading it.
I still did not like it... but the movie wasn't aimed at me. That explains why my wife enjoyed it more than I did. She likes Wonder Woman but didn't know a great deal about her.
Thank you for this comment!
I don't think you were being offensive at all. In your case it was your significant other who did not know very much about the back story. I am sure there are many men as well who did not know it. I don't think it is a difference based on gender, I think it may be based on previous experience with the character."
Very true that the more you know about a character's origins, the more distracting these movies can be. Catwoman was bad in so many ways, but I couldn't get over how they just made up a mystical origin story for her out of whole cloth.
I don't feel that movie needs to stick to the comics 100%, but a little respect for the canon goes a long way for me. Luckily I don't know a ton about Wonder Woman's origins, and what I do know mostly lines up with what I've read from the reviews (she lives on an island with Amazon goddesses with Greek names ;))!
Finally, my wife hates hates hates super hero movies, so when she said she wanted to see wonder woman, I frankly don't care if it's worse than the fantastic four - I'm going to enjoy the crap out of it!
If your wife is into it, you should 100% go. I bet she is going to enjoy it.
I think I am just too much of a geek for this one. (I should have included that in the title).
If you see it, please come back and let me know what you thought. So many of these comments have really helped me to better understand my issues with the movie. If I were going to write a review today, it would be very different. I would have definitely written it from 2 different perspectives: from super geek point of view it was little boring because I knew too much already. From a more casual fan's point of view, I bet it is more enjoyable.