10 Famous Movies That Screwed Up The Most Important Part

4. Cloud Atlas - Levity

Here's a rule: The more 'important' you think your movie is, the less important you should make it feel. For example Flight by Robert Zemeckis has a strong anti-drug, anti-alcohol message, but makes a point to not rub your face in it, or else the movie becomes a multimillion dollar AA commercial. Meanwhile a movie like Cloud Atlas may be the unintentional comedy of the decade. Between human hamburgers, Tom Hanks talking jive, and an Asian woman being digitally altered to look like a redheaded British lass, it's very hard to not roll your eyes and laugh your way through this flick. The movie would have done well to be a little less 'sweeping' and 'epic' and a little more matter of fact. Of all the interconnected stories, only one really feels 'human' in any real tangible way, and that involves a bunch of old-folks escaping from nursing home. Meanwhile, the other segments of the story seem dedicated to reminding you how important all human life is, how we're all connected, and to be frank, this movie's message was done about 500 times better in the drug-fueled Enter The Void. because its message comes with a level of pretension typically reserved for college beat poetry, its impact is muddled. There's racism, sexism, genderism, poisoning, aliens, metaphors for drugs and demons, all connecting these character's stories, in an effort to say that through all these horrible things, humanity is worthwhile. And that's a good message. But the movie is so desperate to pull its strings together that by the end, you're not talking about the message, you're talking about the cheesy lines, dorky race-changing CGI effects, and Tom Hanks' "Tru Tru". What's that? It's Tom Hanks' tribal speak for "sure", and it's said so frequently that if you've seen this movie, it's entered your day-to-day ironic vernacular in the best of ways. For a story about humanity, Cloud Atlas forgot to feel human. There's very little nuance or depth or interplay between the characters that doesn't have a double meaning or some other kind of message. As a result the characters feel ultimately like vessels for the message, instead of real people, which is what the movie is actively trying to celebrate.