Warner Bros. Pictures

We’re all connected. Human beings repeat the same mistakes, generation after generation. And — man, this part is heavy, so maybe, like, sit down for 172 minutes to think about it — even though bad people try to enslave other people, someone awesome will always try to throw off the shackles. Cloud Atlas is so much like the bong-fueled conversations I had in college that I almost ordered a Domino’s pizza afterward. The problem is there’s no emotional hook in this bloated fantasia of special effects and makeup wizardry; the passion is all in the brute labor of adapting David Mitchell’s novel for the screen. Co-directors Andy and Lana Wachowski and Tom Tykwer flit across centuries and genres in a whirlwind of bloody violence and cross-dressing, ethnicity-shifting performances, but there’s as much opportunity to get attached to characters as there would be watching people go by on a roller coaster.

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