Bad but in a really bad way

Rating: 1/10 (27 February 2017)

A film that fails the Turing test - in reverse. Or something. What I mean is that after the first 5 minutes the unpleasant sensation crawled over me that I was participating in a rather sinister experiment, watching a movie made by a computer which was testing me by attempting to provoke a human-like response. Stuffed with algorithms culled from proper movies and musicals, the computer has generated a script and a set of scenarios based on user-preference and targeted directly at my very own demographic! Its eerie; the songs sound like songs but aren't quite, the dialogue sounds like people but not quite, nothing that happens has a real reason or point other than to crank through the plot, the jazz looks like jazz and sounds like jazz but isn't, quite, and the set-ups calculated to provoke an emotional effect left me untouched and feeling slightly hollow. What has been thrown, hurled and heaved at this film is Oscar-seeking acting, Oscar-seeking direction and Oscar-seeking technical twiddling. And hey ho and guess what, it got Oscars. Its the apotheosis of junk food, finally. You don't even need to make the effort to chew; it can now just squirt directly into you via the eyes and ears, a simulacrum of nourishment, over-flavoured glop taking the name of real love, real music, real acting and real life in vain.