like watching a skydiving team

Rating: 8/10 (11 May 2012)

The movie opens with a cast of such obnoxious, self-centred, rude, racist, sexist, irritating characters that we almost turned the movie off.
It is a bit like watching a sky diving team gradually link up to form a giant web in the sky. There is an enormous cast of sharply drawn characters who start out having nothing to do with each other, but by a series of co-incidences, accidents and malice gradually form a completely interconnected web of relationships.
The movie evolves in a way that grabs your heartstrings and won't let go, in a very non-Disney way. Many of the people you want to have a horrible death in the early part of the movie are redeemed or partly redeemed later on.
The problem with such a huge cast, there is hardly any time for each of the stars, especially Sandra Bullock and Brendan Fraser.
There is one intricately crafted plot line that suddenly twists and leaves you gasping, and in tears for ten minutes. I hope nobody gives it away. That will be the moment of the movie you remember 20 years from now.
Because there are so many characters, and because you only gradually discover the relationships, just what is happening is not always obvious.