For a movie that truly values sincerity, why must it dangle keys in my face as if I’m a baby that needs to be kept entertained? A good story, with a good idea for telling it, is bogged down by incessantly having to stop and point out how “silly” it is. The humor fell flat.
I can see why people love the movie. There is a lot to like. It has a very heartfelt message and the themes are made readily apparent, the subtext easy to interpret. But the execution felt incredibly unsatisfying. I was bored or annoyed for most of the film. The feeling that they were trying to achieve through the main plot device (the feeling of “everything everywhere all at once”) was somehow actually done better in the opening sequence than in the movie proper. Probably because that was grounded in reality and wasn’t interrupting itself to try and be Quirky.
The movie has good bones–its primary storytelling device is a genuinely good idea to communicate the primary themes. I just wish it had kept itself more grounded, as the absurdity for the sake of absurdity took me out of the sincerity every time. The film seems to want to pose this absurdity as part and parcel of its sincerity: the absurdity is the point, yada yada. But I couldn’t help but feel that the absurdity was a cop out rather than a true statement, a gimmick to keep things light. And it just wasn’t funny to me. Maybe it was for you!
Perhaps if I hadn’t heard so many people on Twitter saying it was either the best movie of all time or Redditor Cringe, the shock value of it all would have made things go down better. But I hadn’t really heard any details on the plot, and aside from one small scene (the one with rocks), I hadn’t seen any clips online. So while I knew it had a reputation, I feel I still went in pretty blind. Oh well.