A Pretentious, Nonsensical Bore!

Rating: 1/10 (11 July 2005)

I have heard many good things about this movie (both the original and the director's cut) before I saw it. I didn't read any of the reviews though because they usually give too much away and I wanted to watch the movie without some expectation clouding my judgment. Well, I saw it over two nights because it was so boring and it was a huge disappointment.
Many reviews point out how creative and original it is. But just because something is original and creative don't automatically make it good; and this movie surely isn't good or that original or creative. Stripped away the overused time travel sci-fi elements and all you have here is another bored, alienated, American suburban middle-class teenager movie. I wish there are movies that explore why American suburban middle-upper-class environment produces so many bored, alienated teenagers. Seems like a uniquely American phenomenon. Whenever I see movies like that, I tend to scream at the characters to pick up a sport, get a hobby, read some books, do something instead of laying around angry at everybody and being bored. I've never been able to sympathize or empathize with that mentality.
The movie might work better if removed of all the sci-fi trappings and refashion itself as a teenage American Beauty. A lot of people expecting a sci-fi movie came away disappointed at the insipid sci-fi gibberish. Granted, movies about time travel never really make sense because the nature of time travel is just not logical. Many reviews also didn't understand all the elements of the movie. Neither do I. Although I don't require a movie to explain everything, this movie just thinks itself too clever by putting in too many nonsensical elements for me to accept. One reviewer interprets the movie as about schizophrenia and all the sci-fi stuff just happens in the character's head. That's as good an explanation for this mess of a movie as any.
The extras on the Director's cut have a long feature on the loyal admirers of this movie. But they're all British, and in some of the interviews, they are so full of themselves because they know how to appreciate creative movies like this and they understand the movie and don't need to be told what it's about. So, the film makers are so desperate to make the movie appear to be special that they got a bunch of self-aggrandizing foreigners to say how much more intelligent they are because they "get" the movie. The documentary was also filmed in that annoying pretentious artsy style w/ part of a face and lighting from weird angle. Very much a turn off.
As a drama about alienation or schizophrenia, it is intensely boring; as a sci-fi genre movie, it is neither thought provoking nor exciting, it is still intensely boring.