Just watched it and thought it was a steaming pile of shit. Sure, it was well acted and filmed and even paced, but it was stupid. Perhaps the book delivers better?
To me, it came off as a more sanctimonious version of Life Of Pi in that it tried to be profound and fell flat on its face. I mean, do I really need to have 5 or 6 stories wrapped into 3 hours to tell me to treat others well? I've seen that lesson put into lighthearted kids fare, or pretty much every Simpson's episode, for fuck's sake. And save all the mystical past lives shit. I guess that's a device that is necessary to tell what amounts to a series of short stories and provide an excuse to put them all together, but it does not make the story more interesting. At all.
Nevermind that the bogeymen in this case were absurd evils. Well let's throw slavery and bigotry out there because we know that's bad. Now let's throw in the poor gay guy in the 1930s. And we can't forget Big Oil...but hey let's throw in a danger there about nuclear power too even though they'll be good compared to Big Oil. And I guess we'll throw in the old farts for comic relief. Hmmm, and now since we're in the future, let's throw in genetic discrimination and show that authentic Asians are being screwed over by a bunch of white men in bad Asian makeup. And then to further flip things, let's show that Halle Berry and her fellow dark skinned friends are superior to Tom Hanks, his white buddies, and the white cannibals that terrorize him. It's just so clumsy and so fucking obvious. One typically big and bloviated Hollywood preach fest that passes for profound only among the idiots of the world.
But maybe the book was better and had a point.
