Was the judge's speech in the book?
The speech at the end (that explains the entire film and the moral message) is godawful. The speech wasn't in the book was it?
As a whole the movie wasn't terrible, but definitely too silly to take seriously and too moralistic to laugh off. When the music soared at the emotional parts, I cringed. But that is more a bad directing choice than anything else. De Palma's work is very uneven; he's subtle and cutting one moment and then ham-handed the next. But, Jesus Christ, that ending was dumb.