How to ruin a masterpiece 101

Rating: 1/10 (27 March 2020)

Right before the climax of the movie, Bruce Willis' character hugs his partner in crime, the woman he's in love with, and whispers to her that he's scared. The next shot is a cinema usher snoring. Literally. That pretty much sums up the whole film
The tone is too inconsistent for it to be a dark, foreboding sci-fi movie. It's even comical at times, like Brad Pitt's Golden Raspberry-worthy performance, the quirky, post-apocalyptic prison officers, those ridiculous wigs and outfits that the characters used to disguise themselves at the airport... Almost felt like a parody, albeit not funny. It's also too lethargic, passive and spineless to be an action movie. Doesn't work as a romance eiher, as the love affair is lukewarm and unconvicing. There's zero chemistry between the two actors and the connection the characters are supposed to be sharing is communicated to us without heart or spark. It basically boils down to Stockholm Syndrome. So, what box does this movie even tick?
There are no captivating moments, no spikes. The whole movie is just a flat line that keeps throwing random things in my face without a build-up and without any significance. I'm pretty sure I was supposed to be shocked or at least intrigued when it was revealed that the titular group, that we had spent about 100 minutes focusing on, were nothing but a red herring only for a random character that had been awkwardly presented about an hour in advance to be revealed as the real culprit. I... didn't flinch. It just happened, like all the other things that just happened in all 3 worlds that the movie tried (and failed) to construct.
La Jetee, the atmospheric masterpiece this atrocity took its main storyline from, captures the inconceivable power of time travel, the agony of (hopeless) love and the cruelty of humanity in a little over 20 minutes. This movie takes 6 times as long to butcher it. It sucks every bit of soul out of it, over-stuffs it with useless characters and useless subplots, buries the heart of the story under endless deviations, twists and turns that it couldn't set up in a proper and enticing manner and devalues every single element of the original that it touches, from the zoo (that it incorporates just for the sake of it to create its worst and most ridiculous subplot) to the haunting image of the post-apocalyptic underground world. And on top of all that, it makes off with an 8.0 rating.
If I could travel back in time, I would make sure this didn't get funded.