A muddled, less visual knock-off of The Matrix
Film Critic Jason Evans has made it his mission to give you
everything you need to know about films in exactly 100 words (not 99, not 101).
Here is his 100 word review of Bliss.
The Premise: Recently divorced Greg (Owen Wilson) doesn’t like
the world he is living in. He barely pays attention to his job, instead
daydreaming about a mysterious beautiful woman living in an idyllic chateau by
the sea. He heads to a bar to drown his sorrows and meets Isabel (Salma Hayek) who
tells him his life isn’t real. They are both living in a computer generated simulation,
a world they can control if they want to. Greg wakes up and finds himself in
the world he was daydreaming about and Isabel is his wife. Isabel explains that
she invented the humdrum world to help people appreciate the utopia in which
they actually live. But something feels off to Greg and it becomes increasingly
hard for him to figure out which world is real and which is a simulation. The
film is written and directed by Mike Cahill, who is best known for the critically
praised Another Earth.
The 100 Words: Cahill loves twisty sci-fi and he has a clever
idea here, but not the story to support it. The film seems uncertain of the
rules that govern each world, making the central question (which world is real?)
all but impossible to figure out. The film is full of opaque clues and unanswered
questions. But the biggest problem is that I did not care about the answer
because I never connected with the characters. The pieces of a good sci-fi are
here, but they get too jumbled as they are put together and the whole thing ends
up as a mess.
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