Avaliações do Metacritic

The interlocking stories are theoretically about people whose lives are associated; that worked in "Crash." Here the connections seem less immediate and significant, and so the movie sometimes seems based on a group of separate short stories.

Stitching together a quilt of stories involving disparate Angelenos in the mode of "Magnolia" and "Short Cuts" and myriad other crisscrossers, this somber drama is well crafted and watchable but lacks the distinctive story content, style and standout performances to become more than a serviceable reboot of familiar ideas.

Among the other characters are an African-American TV writer (Kali Hawk) who hates black people and a widower (Erik Palladino) who stumbles onto a kidnapping case. The latter development provides the film with a denouement that's dramatically valid if overly neat.

"A Short Cuts" full of self-pitying sociopaths, Answers to Nothing follows its characters toward a succession of increasingly queasy conclusions it tries to pass off as heartfelt and human.

Films like these have taught us that suffering is the incontrovertible existential fate of attractive Los Angeles residents. Must these dour exercises in alienation make audiences suffer as well?

You know it's not working when you don't care about any of them. Sadly, that's the case with Answers to Nothing, Matthew Leutwyler's dud about a revolving cast of characters in Los Angeles.

None of what we see is at all credible.

The result is a diligent brand of gloom. When it isn't being diligently gloomy, it's being obvious. When it isn't being obvious, it's being sneaky, and when it isn't being sneaky, it's marching toward a climax of B-movie violence, stupidity and nuttiness that summarily bumps off the movie's least annoying character.

Not one single character strikes you as being anything but a mouthpiece for writer-director Matthew Leutwyler's simplistic views on socio-emotional problems (racial self-hatred! post-rehab guilt!) or an excuse for self-satisfied, back-patting acting exercises. The title is an understatement.

The most embarrassing project on co-star Barbara Hershey's resume.