Better with the sound turned off

Rating: 2/10 (6 April 2003)

To begin on a positive note, this is a very beautiful film. The sets are wonderfully made and fantastically lit, the costumes are great, the cinematography wonderful, the special effects top-notch. The story's theme will be familiar to anyone who has read Sartre's "No Exit" or has seen the Twilight Zone episode "Five Characters In Search Of An Exit."
But where it falls apart is the writing. Characters in tense situations suddenly stop and make speeches declaring their personal philosophies, or criticizing the personal philosophies of the other characters. Dialogue is wooden and pretentious, as bad as anything in "The Langoliers" (a movie which showed that good actors can't necessarily deliver bad dialogue convincingly.) It wasn't just the dialogue - situations and events were at times painfully predictable, as though they had been taken from a handbook of cliches. And the characters were never really developed - I wasn't able to care about any of them. Maybe I had the misfortune of reading some very good science fiction at the time (the "Dangerous Visions" collection) and had developed a very low tolerance for bad writing, but my two non-science-fiction-fan friends who were watching the movie with me had the same opinion.
This movie is so visually compelling, I realized that it works better as a sort of pantomime - more than eye candy, less than a visual feast, but still an interesting optical meal. Turn off the sound, turn on some good music, sit back, and enjoy the show!