Maybe is not right to judge anything if you didn't saw it entirely, but in the following I'll expose some personal considerations of why this movie sucked.
I didn't saw entirely because it was broadcasting in some tv channel, and I lost the first half of the movie.
Maybe I could say more if I had have read something of Virginia's Woolf works, but even I haven't read anything of it was possible to say why I don't agree with the general reviews and critics about it. They say it was "deeply moving" and "an amazingly faithful screen adaptation" (according to someone's review on Wikipedia), but I think it is dull, VERY dull.
Maybe because the movie has a non-linear form of narrative, looking-alike something of "experimental" matter, (although this is not something new. Really.) but actually is just another fuzzy cliché-istic typical-hollywoodian movie covered with this "not-so usual in mainstream" form of narrative. [SPOILERS] From where I started so see, and what appears to be the main plot of it, it's about meaningless suicide. The main characters suddenly decided , without any good reasons to do it, to kill themselves. Knowing or not something about Woolf, she just looks like a loser wimp that decided to compulsory die because she was too bored of her life; or maybe the anomalous big nose of the actress screwed everything, because maybe you have poundered the most of time while seeing it "wtf this nose looks so strange", with a sneer in your face; or maybe, although most of review praised it, it is Nicole Kidman's performance. I was kinda surprised after read that whe won an Oscar because of this role (although I don't take seriously these 'awards', specially this one). She won an award for an ordinary perfomance. She didn't look like struggling enough, struggling to the point to put an end on everything. She looked like bored and just a little sad. "oh I'm not too much happy, I'll drown myself there and later finish my book".
I think Julian Moore had the best performance in this movie, so far. A thousand time better than the main actress. Even Meryl Streep wasn't that awesomeness that she is known (although there is no reason to personally awe her), or maybe the script is the guilty (or partially) for its dullness.
This movie has some serious deficiency in showing the psychological side of its characters. That's why it's shallow.
This is the best review, taken from Wikipedia:
"Richard Schickel of Time criticized its simplistic characterization, saying, "Watching The Hours, one finds oneself focusing excessively on the unfortunate prosthetic nose Kidman affects in order to look more like the novelist. And wondering why the screenwriter, David Hare, and the director, Stephen Daldry, turn Woolf, a woman of incisive mind, into a hapless ditherer." He also criticized its overt politicization: "But this movie is in love with female victimization. Moore's Laura is trapped in the suburban flatlands of the '50s, while Streep's Clarissa is moored in a hopeless love for Laura's homosexual son (Ed Harris, in a truly ugly performance), an AIDS sufferer whose relentless anger is directly traceable to Mom's long-ago desertion of him. Somehow, despite the complexity of the film's structure, this all seems too simple-minded. Or should we perhaps say agenda driven? The same criticisms might apply to the fact that both these fictional characters (and, it is hinted, Woolf herself) find what consolation they can in a rather dispassionate lesbianism. This ultimately proves insufficient to lend meaning to their lives or profundity to a grim and uninvolved film, for which Philip Glass unwittingly provides the perfect score — tuneless, oppressive, droning, painfully self-important."
I just can't agree with thw opinion about the score, since I hadn't noticed anything to draw attention.