problematic with regard to message

Rating: 3/10 (19 February 2019)

I have never read the novel the movie is based on, so I can't say anything about its value as an adaptation. I'll just try to review what's out there on the screen.
The movie ends on a clear warning : it invites young people to live not in virtual but in actual reality because, well, this is where humankind dwells. A wise and intelligent message, one might think, and a productive one too. However, the movie just spent about an hour and a half lovingly detailing the mental universe of those who live in artificial heavens. Or no, let me rephrase that, of those who are content to live in the artificial heavens others built for them. The movie spent about the same amount of time praising those who immerse themselves in the small details of pop culture, even to the point of obsession. (Many of the characters, including the heroes, are the kind of people - or the equivalent of the kind of people - who spend 800 hours of their precious life discussing whether Captain Kirk's second cousin looked better in scarlet or in teal.)
So the movie is certainly problematic, here.
I wouldn't like to turn this small review into a sermon, but : if I were the parent of adolescent children, I would use the movie as a starting point for a discussion about, say, the rewards and dangers of vicarious living and the sad waste of a life used for silly trivialities. While we're at it, I would also grab my youngsters and take them on a long hike through a large forest, with nary a laptop or smartphone to be seen.
Even apart from these reservations, I found the movie over-long and over-busy, with a relentless "more is more" - approach which tended to drown everything ressembling real danger or real emotion.
I'm still throwing the movie some stars because, in certain aspects, it is very well done, from a technical and technological point of view. Every now and then there are moments of great beauty and charm to be enjoyed. For instance, the movie contained a marvellously fluid and inventive dance between a boy and a girl which reminded me somewhat of the animated gem that is the "Arab veil dance" from "Fantasia", set to Tchaikovsky's music.