Good premise, but with much lacking.

Rating: 7/10 (8 June 2018)

This is a movie that I hope gets re-made someday. It's a really cool premise, and it wasn't exactly executed badly here, but I definitely felt like there was something lacking in it. I turned Mr. Nobody off in the first 20 minutes because I got the sense that it, like Cloud Atlas was going to get a little too caught up in the novelty of its premise and not actually do something interesting with it. This movie is trying to make a pretty interesting, deep, existential point about life. The premise I think is a bit more appealing as a movie premise to Western cultures because we, for the most part, do not believe in reincarnation. It seemed like the whole point of the movie was that our actions can have an impact on people that live long after us, which I definitely believe in and I don't think a lot of people could argue against it that strongly. However, I didn't see that any of the storylines actually connected in a meaningful way. It just seemed like all the characters got re-incarnated as someone else in each situation and you had to just play a "match the face" game with each story line. Also, they all seemed to be reincarnated as the same type of character each time. Now, I don't know much about what some Eastern religions believe about reincarnation, but the way I understand it, your starting point in one life is based on what you did in your previous life and you're supposed to try to do better each time around. I'd like to think that we change enough over one lifetime that we'd be unrecognizable from one life to the next; in other words, I'm saying the casting choices of this movie are not true to life even if they are cinematic and interesting.
I think there was also not really enough attention given to each storyline and they were a little too complicated to keep track of all of them. Say you have 30 minutes for each different story, you can't expect the audience to know where each one is at. That works for TV shows sometimes, but even then it's can get confusing. I didn't really care enough about each story to be invested in any of them, which I think indicates that they bit off a little more than they could chew. Also, the two futuristic stories felt kind of ridiculous, especially the language of the people in the future Hawaii. That was nothing short of annoying. It also seemed that those two were the only ones that were connected in any kind of meaningful way, which is another weak point for the story.
So I'm just going to suggest two ideas for how this could be re-made or at least tweaked in concept. One is a version where it follows one person over several different lifetimes, even though something tells me that's been done before. The other is a version that connects a few people from different times that are more directly connected, sort of like Interstellar or X-Men Days of Future Past. I think it would be possible and really cool to show two connected stories in parallel where the actions of the past person were directly influencing the events of the future person's life. The only person I would trust to turn this exact concept into a story that would fulfill its potential is Christopher Nolan because he has mastered using non-linear storytelling and has proven that he can blend concepts of time and human emotion/connection really well.
I would recommend this lightly. It's not bad, but its not as good as its premise sounds. I wouldn't try to keep track of everything because it won't really make it a better experience for you or anything like that. Basically, it's a cool enough premise that is well-paced enough to keep your attention and make you think a little, but it's not nearly as good as it could be. Overall Rating: 7.4/10.