Muddled Mashup of New-Age Mysticism

Rating: 1/10 (28 October 2013)

If you are the type to choose all-you-can-eat buffets for the quantity of food, with little regard for quality, then you may enjoy this movie. Unlike other detractors, I found the acting and photography mostly well done. I did not mind the same actors playing different characters (à la Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove). After all, that is their profession. Objectively, I would have given Cloud Atlas 2 or even 3 stars for cinematography. However, I have given it only 1 star to help counter the outrageous over-rating it has acquired from the easily impressed. Cloud Atlas serves up several different, conflicting film genres, with bits stolen from better movies, without a single original idea of its own. It starts with a nicely realistic South Seas mutiny-type adventure reminiscent of 1984's The Bounty. Then it switches abruptly to an Amadeus type tragedy of a talented composer's life cut short. After a brief paean to the gratuitous violence of a Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, it unexpectedly flips to a light-hearted version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Of course, it throws in the liberal de rigueur anti-nuclear and anti-big oil diatribe from The China Syndrome. Abruptly abandoning all realism, it adds a splash of stylistic action and wooden acting fluff from The Matrix, conflated with a '70's throwback to Soylent Green. Plop on an ending from any post-apocalyptic movie from the past 30 years. Finally top the whole mess off with meaningless new-age beatnik style drivel from Roger Corman's 1959 Bucket of Blood. Taken separately, these different episodes would make a mildly diverting all-night B-movie marathon. Unfortunately, they take this clashing cacophony of different film styles, from well-done realism to silly sci-fi, and intercut the stories in a totally random manner as if they are all related. Really? These stories are all connected by - what? Karma? Love? Fate? Bad makeup? No, silly. They all have the same birthmark. Get it? As long as coherent story-telling and originality are not important to you, then at 3 hours, you will get your money's worth of decent acting and pretty pictures tossed at you in a diverting kaleidoscope fashion. This is to keep you from thinking about what a mess the whole thing actually is.