[mitch_h]

I saw this last night and while I'm a huge fan of the book I lowered my expectations because of the tepid reviews.

I was surprised how well the script was reassembled while remaining faithful to the book, so my issues with the movie were not on the page but within the frame. The biggest mistake was obviously the reuse of actors in different roles, such a terrible decision. I felt embarrassed every time there were black actors doing white-face, white actors doing yellowface, black Asian faces, men in drag, Asians as freckled white women, Asian Jim Sturges looking like Keanu Reeves... if Tom Hanks would have shown up as a child I would have killed myself. Not only was it hackey and distracting but it also fractured the film tonally as some stories felt corny, cartoonish and cheap sci-fi. While other stories where the dress up wasn't as noticeable were appropriately dark and at times moving. This decision was also accountable for new-agey/reincarnation themes that were not present in the book. I don't know if this was the intent but I saw the movie with my family and my dad thought that each character was supposed to be the reincarnation of characters from other stories, dumb. Part of me thinks that the reason they did this was so the audience could relate to the characters more... but the principal cast of characters was no more expansive than movies like Magnolia, Nashville and Short Cuts.

I'll give the filmmakers credit for creating really well done and thrilling action sequences. Some of the cross-cutting was really inspired. And there were generally moving/lyrical sequences that did the book justice. Maybe I'm being too forgiving but I found the movie too original and ambitious to truly hate, it's frustrating, inconsistent but I would give it a 6/10.