Fascinatingly, the director, Tom Tykwer, manipulates the same minor characters and props throughout each story, but little tricks of timing give them completely different meanings. To push his point on the meaninglessness of luck, he'll briefly stop the film and whirl through a photo montage of the possible different fates of each of these minor characters, who sometimes end up as lottery winners and other times end up as corpses. Hey, it's neat. But it's also simple-minded and squalid. Nobody in it is interesting, and if they ever stood still, you'd find them reprehensible.
Nobody's very good looking.
The colors are vulgarly garish. Manni could use a good butt-whipping. Lola could use new hair, better clothes and a job. As for der schlechter Vater, he needs years of therapy and, if that fails, a nice lobotomy. It's empty of charm and meaning, but it certainly kills time, for those who wish it dead.