Engaging, but lacking in substance

Rating: 6/10 (30 April 2012)

From the very beginning, this movie sets out to engage the audience and confront people with philosophical questions about time, and life. While I do like this approach, I cannot praise it too much because it sacrifices the story's coherence for a lot of drama that slows the film down. It is necessary to the story though, but I think the problem lies in the way the script is build up.
Of course, this is still a matter of opinion, but to me whenever the movie got into the whole "multiple decisions in life" I thought it was very refreshing and interesting. But when the movie gets into the multiple lovers and marriages it slows down and the movie gets downright boring in some parts. Let me just clarify that I don't have anything against 'slow-paced' movies, or movies that don't focus as much on action, as long as it stays interesting or (in this case) thought-provoking. I told my friend who was watching it with me that it feels like it was directed by multiple people.
As I said, I do like the concept this movie was going for. I just hope that in the future, a movie gets to marry interesting theoretical possibility's with a coherent script a little better. Because of the somewhat fragmented result, the movie seems a bit too pretentious and overall too pleased with itself.
I'm somewhat hesitant to recommend Mr Nobody. Even though its definitely engaging, I don't think this movie will obviously appeal to everybody. Especially not to people who aren't into pseudo-scientific speculation. But if you're open to these sort of things and similar artistic efforts, you will praise this as much as anybody else.