Derivative and unintelligent

Rating: 5/10 (30 April 2004)

Woaw. After all the good things I had read about it, I was expecting something outstanding, somewhere between "Brazil", "La Cité des Enfants perdus" and "Blade Runner".
What a waste of time. I don't get it that so many people don't realize the emptiness of this.
All the elements of this movie are stolen from other people's works. Well it's no the real problem as movies are often made out of pieces of other movies, sometimes with success. It can even turn into an art in itself. But then it needs intelligence to introduce some consistency, some vision, or some interesting distance. Nothing like this here. A pure immature, soulless, self-conscious, sophomoric patchwork.
This "sci-fi" (actually much more fantasy than sci-fi BTW!) world has no inner consistency, and is made up of bits and pieces just put together without any sense of unity. The filmmakers don't even try actually, as if these guys considered that looking cool, original and different was enough. Well this was a good bet, as it seems like thousands of people actually bought this vapid nonsense. Shows the actual depth of today's popular culture in sci-fi and fantasy.
Personally, when it comes to vapid "cool" stuff, I still prefer to watch some Buffy episode. At least, it doesn't try to make you believe you're watching some life-altering peace of art...
And when it comes to present a new world on the screen, I'll keep up with Brazil, Delicatessen, La Cité des enfants perdus, ExistenZ, The nightmare before Christmas, Kafka, Santa Sangre, Eraserhead, Blade Runner, Enrendira, Metropolis, and of course A Clockwork Orange and 2001. I'm not exhaustive here. Not to mention the Brothers Quay's shorts, or K. Dick's works, that are to "Dark City" what Aretha Franklin and Ella Fitzgerald are to Celine Dion.