Hey, hey, remember that one time that I said Swedes are good at making movies? I’m probably still right. Apparently though I don’t really like all good movies.
This ponderous collection of useless mini-stories about useless people has gotten some pretty darn good reviews from pretty important people. Ebert gave it four stars and called it Perfect. Even Armond White likes this stuff for some reason. Ideally, I should like it too, based on the concept alone; it’s supposedly a black comedy with absurdist bits shot in an unconventional manner (paraphrased from Wikipedia). This sounds a lot like Brazil or something, which I do enjoy from time to time. However, so much of this movie is just drawn out nothing that I got bored with it almost as soon as it started. There are several musical segments, which I think are done wrong; movies like Scott Pilgrim and That Thing You Do have the right idea in this arena, here they’re just bland monotonous dirges. Several of the conversations are just people talking into phones.
The absurdist parts were pretty much the only bits I enjoyed; a couple times a character would describe a dream they had, and then it would be played out as they dictated. They were still slow but at least some weird stuff happened. The other unusual thing was the common thread among the characters in that they all seemed to think very little of themselves, and would often let other people know this at length. It got pretty annoying really.
I think I can see how somebody might enjoy this, but really it’s just way too boring and disjointed to keep my interest. Most other movies with multiple storylines have a much better defined intersection. This is pretty much just a gallery of misery.
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