trelloskilos-1

Without doubt, one of my most favourite movies of all time.

I love a good movie that screws with your mind (The Game, Primer, Cube, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Mulholland Drive, Identity etc.) where the movie you think you're seeing becomes something else entirely. Mr. Nobody is one of those films.

Part sci-fi, part romance, part thriller, part comedy, the film ruminates on the old multiverse theory, that a single decision by an individual, creates multiple parallel universes where the alternative outcomes are selected. Of course, this idea from quantum physics, has been used before in many other sci-fi movies, but not like this.

Describing the plot is a bit of a challenge, as there are so many threads to this movie, right off the bat. Mr. Nobody is a man who is conscious of the other universes where certain key decisions of his life are all played out, and he seems to jump between them. The main one, however, is set in a future utopia, where he is the oldest human & will be the last human to ever die. - Actually, that description is pretty weak.

How about comparing it with other movies? Well, I guess this would be a bit like a mash-up of Cloud Atlas, the Fifth Element and The Butterfly Effect, but co-directed by Darren Aaronofsky and Michel Gondry with Terry Gilliam and Wes Anderson on hand...

...but even that does not do the movie justice.

The movie will be polarising. It has a lot of great ideas, and is cerebral one minute, goofy the next minute, and tragic the next. - If you enjoy or appreciate any of the movies I've mentioned in this review, you should enjoy Mr. Nobody...and if you still don't think you understand what the movie is about after reading these reviews, I would highly recommend just watching it anyway!

It is a real shame that this remake of the cult classic was a real let-down. I think that a whole generation of RHPS fans wanted to like this movie, but the result was a botch job with a complete lack of all the charm and raunch that made the original such a great film.

The problem seems to stem with what the film is trying to be. Is it a tribute? A remake? A homage? An update for a modern audience? Are the actors trying to bring a new spin on the characters or are they trying to mimic the nuances of the original cast? - Unfortunately, the answer seems to be a bit of everything and nothing, and that's why it all becomes a bit of a mess.

Firstly, the music. Richard O'Brien & Jim Steinman created characters and wrote music that was supposed to be raunchy, sexy and appealing. The original RHPS featured rock guitars, pounding beats and a streak of devilish mischief. When Frank first appears to stomping drumbeats, or when Eddie belts out Hot Patootie, you feel the music. When Frank sings to Rocky, its flirtatious, and sexy. Each cast member injects their character into the song, whether it's Magenta's vampishness, Riff-Raff's dryness, Brad & Janet's naivety etc, its all there. This remake has none of that. The music seems sterile, no rock, no passion, no life.

I didn't mind Laverne Cox too much. She was OK as Frank, but didn't really bring anything new to the table. Tim Curry was pretty much inimitable, which is why it would have been better for Laverne Cox to do something different with Frank's character. She didn't. Instead, it just felt like she had watched the original movie, and tried to mimic all the moves & speech patterns of Curry's Frank'n'Furter, and ended up missing the point.

In fact, I could make the same criticism of most of the other characters. Riff Raff, Brad, Janet and (sadly) the Narrator all sounded like they had watched the original too many times,and practiced their role independently of each other, but together, it all became disjointed, with no comic pacing or understanding of the actual character. Sorry, but Magenta needs to be vampish, Riff Raff needs to be Machiavellian, Columbia needs to be hedonistic, Frank needs to be a larger-than-life charismatic glam degenerate rockstar playboy onmisexual predator mad scientist. Brad & Janet just need to be confused innocents and Rocky just needs to be a dunce. Nobody succeeded in encapsulating their actual role. It just looked like everyone was trying to out-ham everyone else. Even Rocky juddered about like a wind-up toy with a bladder problem.

Again, going back to what the movie wanted to be, it seemed confused. Some scenes were almost take-for-take retreads of the original. Some were completely new, in a 'good idea at the time' sort of way. sometimes, the movie tried too hard, and sometimes it all seems phoned-in. Even Tim Curry delivered his lines with no real aplomb, and seemed to have just been added for the sake of an obligatory cameo.

It's a shame. I wanted this to succeed, but it was a remake without the soul and heart of the original.