Senseless and oh so ... boring

Rating: 1/10 (28 December 2012)

After reading a lot of encouraging reviews on IMDb I was looking forward to seeing this movie. It was quoted 'epic' quite a few times. Well let me get straight to the point: epic it was most certainly not. I would like to warn people from jumping in and expecting a wonderfully complex, yet flawlessly executed journey across time ... So what went wrong? The idea is sound, the actors are good? Well there are a few things that are wrong. Let's start with the script ... it is either overly complex (as some reviews point out correctly) or plain silly (as others point out correctly as well). The same set of actors are portraying different characters in different eras. This becomes so dull and silly that at times you genuinely believe you are back in the 90s watching an Eddie Murphy movie where he plays multiple characters. At least the intention of Eddie Murphy was to be funny. To see this set of actors putting on different accents and dragged into different ethnicities is laughable to the point of painful. I would have definitely fired the make up artists on the spot. Seeing Tom Hanks with another prosthetic nose and false teeth, or Hally Berry as a white woman is over the top. If you do want a great laugh though, fast forward to the part in the future, where suddenly everyone is supposed to look Asian. Asian? They all look like they have had a bad reaction to a bee sting ... sigh ...
I have to be honest. I did not pay to see this movie, which was godsend. Out of respect of the theatre owner I did have to sit through it. If I had paid for this I would have walked out after the second 'costume change' of the actors.
Whoever believes this is an epic tale needs to look up epic in the dictionary (or Google it these days). I am sure you will find the following titles under your definition of epic: Waterworld - Hudson Hawk - Dick Tracy - to name a few. All very expensive movies who just ... didn't deliver! Or maybe IMDb is now truly taken over by the studios with thousands of people in a sweatshop somewhere saying this is 'oh so amazing'.
Comparing this to Stanley Kubrick is an insult ... a real insult. At least the critics got it right!
It's a turd ... avoid at all cost ... unless you are so bored the only alternative is to slit your wrists (which might actually be more fun).