Great concept, too much intellectual nonsense

Rating: 3/10 (15 January 2018)

Listen up. If you want to watch a intellectually stimulating film with a very unorthodox structure, watch Memento. If you want to watch a sad surreal film, watch Synecdoche, New York. If you want to watch a happy surreal film, watch The Grand Budapest hotel.
This is one of the coolest concepts of storytelling ever. Unfortunately, it is executed
badly.
First let me state the good things about this movie. It has a very cool concept. It has very pretty cinematography. Some of the shots are beautiful and creative. Some of the acting is nice at certain parts. And I have to admit, it is quite unique. A lot of it is just pretentious nothing, but some of it is quite unique.
Now the bad things.
Firstly, there is so much just random stuff that has nothing to do with anything. Why is he explaining the butterfly effect? Why are they talking about pigeon experiments? What's with the angels and the babies? Why the hell can he see into the future? Why does the model version of the world in his room match perfectly with the real world? Why are all the endings of the timelines shown at the beginning? How does any of this change or impact the emotional value of the movie anyway?
The movie doesn't really start until thirty minutes into the movie, when he's running after his mother in the train. It is prefaced with thirty actual minutes of just nonsense that is simply there to confuse you and make you think there is symbolic meaning behind it or some shit. Once it does start, it's....... bad. Nemo has almost zero character at all, in every single timeline. The tiny bit of characterization that they give him makes him very unlikeable. He pretends to kill himself so much that his mother isn't even surprised anymore. This is supposed to make me like him? He "falls in love" with people through a montage of slow motion shots of them looking pretty instead of actually having a natural conversation or having any chemistry at all. The plots don't have any direction. You just kind of watch his life happen. There is no goal he is trying to reach or problem he is trying to over come. There isn't really a "point" to the story. Sometimes this works fine, like in Forrest Gump. But that was a masterfully written script that is so engaging that it manages to pull it off. This movies does not. For the most part the acting is passable for the adult actors. The same cannot be said about the child actors. They are bad. Very bad.
You know how this film could be fixed? Cut out all the philosophical garbage. Cut out the plot line in the future where he's old. Don't spend so much time explaining to the audience the concept of the movie and just show them the actual movie. Stop explaining how the story had multiple timelines and they are all just as real as one another. Make Nemo a normal kid who doesn't see into the future. Switch between the different branches of the story in a clear and consistent way where the audience knows what timeline they are in at all times. And most importantly of all: Tell the story of a (relatively) normal person that branches out into several wildly different but all (relatively) normal storylines. If you want to tie several timelines together in a cathartic way, do it subtly, through music and editing.
The bottom line is that this movie is very pretentious and squanders a perfectly good concept.