Came highly recommended, sorely disappointed

Rating: 2/10 (16 November 2014)

Was not impressed. Let me first iterate that I do not watch movies in order to attempt to puzzle together obscure clues nay, not even clues, items of information, to rationalize the movie as a whole. There are what, 6 different story lines? And I do admit, each is moderately interesting in nature and each could make for a moderately acceptable movie, but to mash them all together and toss in minute details to "link" them together truly creates one big horrendous monstrosity. When making a movie of this type the separate stories must end up being linked in a clever way, one the watcher did not expect but still one that makes sense to all the aspects of the movie. Cloud Atlas did not have such links, the connections were poorly constructed, easy to miss, and did not connect the stories very well. 6 OK stories on their own, but totally botched in putting them together leaving the viewer disorientated, confused and, most importantly, removed from the movie.
On another note. constantly during watching I was confused, not by the plot, but by how I was supposed to be reacting the situations presented to me. This feeling totally removed me from the movie to the point where I did not care about any of the characters anymore. I kept moving the mouse in order to see how much time was left before I could shut the dang thing off and go to sleep (I strongly believe in finishing a movie, no matter how terrible).