One of the Most Pretentious Movies I've Ever Seen

Rating: 4/10 (7 December 2013)

The Wachowski...um...siblings attempt to make the epic movie to end all epic movies. That's part of the problem. They're trying too hard to make this something epic and it winds up feeling like a pretentious bore of a film.
The film is divided into many different stories that each tie back together in ways that are supposed to be profound but fail to feel that way. The South Pacific 1846 and San Francisco 1973 parts are wholly uninteresting, uninvolving endeavors. Cures for insomnia for sure. UK 2012 has a few amusing moments courtesy of Jim Broadbent, easily the best actor in the film. So far ahead of the others it's shameful. Tom Hanks, as in the South Pacific sequence, is hidden away behind a putty nose makeup job. The makeup in this film is terrible and distracting. Don't even get me started on the white/yellow/whatever face.
Neo Seoul 2144 is mindnumbingly dull and serves to be the movie's preachiest part. The 1936 part is also message-heavy. Despite this, it's the film's second best story. Big Island 2321 is probably the film's most interesting story, although it takes awhile to figure out what the heck everyone is saying. It's like watching a foreign language movie without subtitles sometimes. This is also the area of the movie where Hanks overacts the least. The acting in this film is uneven at best, with the best acting coming from the Brits and the worst coming from the Americans, particularly Hanks.
Ultimately it's a preachy "message movie," with all of its messages being delivered with the subtlety of a jackhammer. You can see them all coming a mile away. For a nearly three hour film, this is a death sentence. If you can't surprise your audience, you really shouldn't take up that much of their time. This is a chore of a movie to sit through, anchored by a simplistic worldview and a desire to be something much deeper and significant than it really is.