Epically pretentious drivel

Rating: 1/10 (10 February 2013)

Seeing as most people seem to adore this film and have the opinion it's real high-brow stuff I'm sure most of these clever geniuses will claim that I never really "got the movie". Because surely that would be the explanation for not liking this epic feat of artistical splendor, right?
No, I "got the movie" just fine. I could understand the connections between the segments and could follow the narrative stream just fine. I got that it was about the various struggles and hardships of being human and what that means. I just plain out didn't like most part of it. To me the movie, apart from being ridiculously owerblown and pretentious in this statement, seemed void and lacking of any cinematic quality in any way. The director clearly hasn't an artistic bone in his body and the result is a tediously outstretched and really very confused hodgepodge of terrible science fiction on the one hand and pretentious uninspired period drama on the other and with a more or less comedy piece set in present day thrown in the middle of it all for good measure. With such a magnificent chaos of directing the 3 hours of the movie seem to go on for almost as long as the 1000 years of the plot. Now the present day segment (the one with the cockney Tom Hanks and the nursery home bit) I actually found to be quite entertaining and it is the sole reason for me not trashing the movie completely. A good nod should go to Jim Broadbent who really shone in all of his roles throughout the film, but especially here in this segment. However one brilliant actor can't redeem a movie that's so severely lacking elsewhere.
So to sum things up (as I really don't want to spend an entire night writing a review for a movie I didn't even like): One of the segments was fairly amusing, yes. However the rest of it was just awful pretentious drivel either as a tediously lacklustre pretentious period drama or otherwise a flat out B quality science fiction flick. Grade: 2 whatevers out of 10.
Now if you really wish to see a "philosophical epic" currently in theaters, go see "Life of Pi" instead, it's a great film. Cloud Atlas is definitely not.