Mind Numbingly Awful

Rating: 2/10 (21 July 2010)

Recently I had the opportunity of viewing the extended version of Mr. Nobody, and reading some of the reviews of this well hidden science fiction epic, it really seemed like my cup of tea. After watching it in all of its two hour and thirty minute glory, I now feel an inane displeasure, akin to what I can only assume as having my frontal lobe stabbed with an ice pick.
Before I review the things I disliked about this movie, let me tell you about the things it got right. First of all, the set design and cinematography were excellent. Visually, the movie was colorful, vivid and imaginative. Also, it has a wide variety of period music which I thought fitting in the scenes they including it in. The scene with the space elevator, ship and mars colonies were also visually a nice touch.
That's about all the pleasure I took away from this movie. For the acting, writing and directing; I found it extremely tedious. The pacing of the movie was terrible. The alternate realities that Nemo experienced, while varied, did not justify the huge expenditure of time devoted them, nor did I feel like they moved the movie along in any significant way. The storytelling was so fragmented that I was unable to feel any connection between Nemo and his many loves and even less for his children which were so insignificant they just felt like filler and could have been left out of the movie completely. And for the ending, what I guess some people would consider a twist, I saw as just plain stupid if you think deeply into what it suggested. In summary, I found it boring and pretentious, and just not worth it. The movie aimed high trying to captivate the viewer in parallel realities, immortality, quantum mechanics and good old fashioned space exploration, but failed at the basics of storytelling and proper editing.