TheThill

Dark, ponderous, confusing, murkily surreal. We were very happy when it was over (although it was our own fault for not leaving early.) Save yourself the trouble to trying to figure out what is going on for two hours (well the last ten minutes consists of slow crawling through snow, not much to figure out there), and just take it on faith that all is not well in the state of Russia.

In a poor answer to the acclaimed film about autism, this film did very little other than annoy from beginning to end. With an idea similar to the Cruise-Hoffman movie but this time with an autistic sister and a "miracle cure" involved, it could have been an interesting, if somewhat unoriginal story. But a saccharine script and often embarrassing overacting made this a rather grating airplane time-waster. Don't even think about paying (non-airline) money to see it.

Actually, it was quite refreshing to see the "action movie" actors, Bruce Willis and Nick Nolte, playing their absurd roles in this unexpectedly well-implemented transformation of Kurt Vonnegut's novel -- one that would seem to defy filming. The satire, dangerously close to American reality, was not only as true as feasibly possible to the spirit of the original book, but was at times quite humorous in its own right. Enjoy this film (from beginning to end), and keep a (swift) eye out for Vonnegut's cameo as the "director" of the car-lot commercial.