Oh My, This Is Just Not a Very Good Film

Rating: 4/10 (28 June 2013)

"Cloud Atlas" the novel struck me when I read it as the kind of book that would be pretty much unfilmable, and seeing this hot mess of an adaptation has not changed my mind.
How to explain "Cloud Atlas?" Several stories set over different time periods -- the oldest set in the mid-19th century, the latest set in an apocalyptic future -- are connected through works of art, mostly of the written word, created in each that are then consumed by characters in the other stories. For those of you who remember freshman English, the plot is much more important than the story. This is a book about big themes, not individual characters. It's a grand thing to read, and one of the best books I've read in recent memory.
The movie boldly tries to be faithful to the book, which is an admirable ambition but also is its failing. There's simply too much to get through, and the film spends more time on telling the stories than developing the themes. It makes a valiant effort to include all the connections the book does, and I actually quite liked the end, which does bring everything together rather nicely, but I'd given up on the movie by then, which comes at you like a never-ending assortment of random scenes.
A conceit the movie explores which wasn't available as an option for the book is having the same actors play various characters throughout the film. It's a good way to literally link the stories to one another. However, it just doesn't work. It's like a variation on "Around the World in 80 Days," where you're so distracted by trying to identify the actors that you forget to pay attention to the movie. It doesn't help that the makeup is rather awful, and actors like Tom Hanks, Hugh Grant and Halle Berry look noticeably uncomfortable under the heaps of prosthetics they're asked to wear. Some of Hanks' makeup looks as outrageous as that to be found in the "Austin Powers" movies, with the major difference being that the makeup in those films was played for gags, whereas we're supposed to take the "Cloud Atlas" makeup straight.
I'm fairly curmudgeonly when it comes to giving movies kudos for ambition alone. If you're going to take on something as exceptional as "Cloud Atlas," do it right or all you've succeeded in doing is ruining it.
Grade: C