'Find Wally' – The Movie

Rating: 5/10 (30 March 2014)

This film is based on the book game where you have to find a small character (Wally) hidden among a complex picture of similar people and objects. Each page of the book is set in a different scene –the seaside, a park, etc. In this film you have to find famous, and not so famous, actors (male and female), who play different parts in six different time-lines. It does sound a bit easy, but the actors are helped by a large make-up and special effects team.
The majority of the actors in this film are of Anglo Saxon origins, so the directors Tom Tykwer, and Andy & Lana Wachowski make it easy for you to find Halle Berry, Keith David, and Xun Zhou, for obvious cultural reasons, despite their acting skills. Jim Broadbent, Hugh Grant, Hugo Weaving, Susan Sarandon, and Jim Sturgess are more difficult to find in some scenes, as they do some quite decent acting. Tom Hanks on the other hand, is very easy to find in each story, as in all his films, he plays himself with the addition of the props department.
Now the most difficult things to find are the plot and the point of the film. The story line jumps around from the 19th to the 23rd century, through 1930's Cambridge, and 1970' New York. And the idea of the film seems to be about whether or not we should open or close connected doors through time, on the 'journey of life'. The music is the standard 'four violins and a piano'; extra violin for intense scenes.
So, if you want to play this game - have fun, but for almost 3 hours, you may need to swap the XL cola for an XXL Red Bull. And don't worry, if you don't manage to find all the actors, all their characters are revealed at the end of the movie. You'll be aghast!