As a fan of Terry Gilliam's prior work, I was confident that this film would live up to 'Brazil' and 'Twelve Monkeys'. Couldn't be more wrong. The screenplay makes Forrest Gump look sophisticated. The characters are uniformly caricatural: the tortured genius looking for truth, the hooker with a heart of gold, the tech-savvy adolescent wise beyond his years, the shrewd business mogul who manipulates all, and so on, and so on. Art direction, musical score, set design, range between annoying and just plain over the top. Special effects and computer graphics straight out of the late great Cannon Studios tradition of C for cheeeeesy. As regards the cast, Matt Damon is wooden and Tilda Swinton (who I revere), histrionic. Only Christoph Waltz manages to keep his character afloat, through stilted dialogue and terrible costumes, for which he deserves a better part. The worst thing, by far, is the mannered camera work, which makes every one of the seemingly endless 107 minutes excruciating to watch. This film is an embarrassment to all involved. If you like Terry Gilliam, do yourself a favour and skip this one.
Review of The Zero Theorem
