Review: Cloud Atlas

It’s time to pull the plug on Andy and Lana (formerly Larry) Wachowski.  Fourteen years ago they put together a cleverly written and directed mega hit known to all as The Matrix. Since then, their careers have been on a steady descent into ineptitude.  How so?  They greatly devalued their one claim to fame with two disastrous sequels (Matrix Reloaded, and Matrix Revolutions); milked said franchise for every single penny with mediocre video games and other licensing ventures; and they turned a cult classic of a cartoon in Speed Racer into a cinematic assault on the senses.  The latter led to a four-year hiatus from the film game that officially came to an end with the release of Cloud Atlas.

Typically this is the point in the review where I give a synopsis of the plot, but with Cloud Atlas that is really difficult to do.  This difficulty is born from the film’s unbalanced detailing of a handful of plots ranging from the distant past to the distant future, all edited with neither rhyme nor reason and presented with no sense of order or sensibility.  This renders viewers disoriented and completely disconnected from the film and its characters, which is incredibly ironic because the movie fancies itself a highbrow attempt at showing how all life is interconnected, when in fact the film’s many plots are anything but that.

In the line of things that went horribly wrong with this film, first and foremost would be the aforementioned odd choices in editing.  However, right on its heels would have to be the casting and acting choices.  It is a slippery slope to ask one actor to play multiple roles in a film.  I am hard pressed to name two or three times where it has worked and can rattle off movies ad nauseum in which it didn’t (Norbit, The Nutty Professor, Jack and Jill, Last Action Hero, et al).  Besides the fact that none of those movies are in anyone’s pantheon of greats, another thing they have in common is that they all aspire to be somewhat comedic.  Why?  Because the same actor in multiple roles feels gimmicky and is distracting, hence it works best as a sight gag. 

In Cloud Atlas, not just one actor takes on multiple roles, but nearly the whole cast of principles including Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugo Weaving, Susan Sarandon, and Hugh Grant.  Let me not mince words here when I tell you that it just flat out does not work.  Forget that the costume changes border on the ridiculous, that the makeup jobs appear absolutely amateurish, and that for the duration of the film you will find yourself constantly struggling to discern the who, what, when, where, and why of any given moment, the fact of the matter is that none in the cast are up to the task of taking on this endeavor.  Never is this more glaring than with Tom Hanks.  This is a guy with some serious hardware in his trophy cabinet and he is made to look like an absolute fool in this flick.  The asinine appearances, over the top accents, and rudimentary logic render the cast inept and completely tear this film down. That I made it to the end of the movie is simply the result of disbelief - disbelief that the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer could a film together of this nature.  In my mind there had to be an “ah” moment at the end that would bring every all together.  But sadly that never happens. 

Even now in thinking about this film, I can’t tell you for sure if I watched five, six, or seven storyline in this movie, but I can tell you for sure that each one of them was bad.  I have heard the words ambitious, genius, and intelligent attached to this movie by the people who will spend forty minutes detailing the difference between a movie and a film, but that’s merely the “nothing musings” of a societal blowhard.  Cloud Atlas is essentially the cinematic equivalent of a bronze rendering of dog poop sitting on a pedestal in an art gallery.  And because someone somewhere calls it is art, people stand there and ponder it, all the while thinking that it is nothing more than dog poop.  That’s Cloud Atlas – dog poop.  Don’t see it.  Don’t rent it.  In fact, never watch another movie made by the Wachowskis again and hopefully their brand of pseudo intellectual cinema will just go away once and for all.

Standout Performance: If there was anyone who acquitted himself of the nonsense surrounding the entire production it would have to be Ben Whishaw who did a nice job as aspiring composer Robert Frobisher.