The script crashed but no one seems to notice

Rating: 1/10 (13 June 2005)

When you notice that Frank Capra's 'It's a Wonderful Life' is the film playing at Westwood's Regent theatre in one of the movie's first scene, you should know you're in for trouble. CRASH is a "well intentioned" film and I suspect the IMDb reader base that is praising it does so because of the script's attempts to try and reveal that there is more beneath the surface of human's apparent prejudice. Unfortunately, as a critic for the New York Times explained it, this film shows that there is only the absolute opposite. The characters in this film have no subtlety and no range of human emotions. There isn't a single real character in this movie, only contrivances that are constructed around a writer's technical skill at creating unsupported ironic events (as we see so many times when the introductory actions of a character become their opposite). The movie, basically, has neither a sense or reality nor a skillful sense of artifice. It is, ultimately, a mess with good production values. While I would normally just dismiss it and not write a comment, I am somewhat frightened by the number of rave reviews that this film is receiving in IMDb. I can't understand this. All I can assume is that the general audience is subject to such garbage that anything with a little bit of reversal in the characters comes as a shocking delight that is worthy of praise.