I am not a fan of Charlie Kaufman-type movies, but I went to see this film because I really like Paul Giamatti. I am also fond of Emily Watson and David Strathairn, so I figured: what the hell. After all, the filmmaker Sophie Barthes says she is not very influenced by Charlie Kaufman, so I figured maybe there’s a chance that it will not be a shallow, pretentious, intellectual farce that goes nowhere.

Barthes’ film is not as screwball as Charlie Kaufman’s stuff, but it is also not as funny or entertaining. It’s not really funny at all. Yes, in the beginning the audience was laughing a bit, and I smiled a few times, but that was because of Paul Giamatti’s quirky reactions and delivery (which are amusing in general.) The comic material itself was quite bland and uninspired, and the pacing of the film totally did not support the comedic moments at all.

But soon you are actually wishing for more of these dull attempts at humor because the film quickly drops all pretense of being a comedy and turns into a post-modern downer. What this film secretly aspires to be is a serious, moody art piece making some grandiose statement about the soul and the human condition, or something like that. When I saw the film, the audience full of giddy New York City hipsters and intellectuals went dead silent after the first quarter of the film, and didn’t seem particularly happy when they left the theater.

The problem with this film being a post-modern downer is that it doesn’t really have very much to say. The film never deepens past the twin surface-level concepts: that evil Russian gangsters are trafficking souls, and Paul Giamatti stores his soul in a facility and it gets stolen. These two surface concepts feel pasted together in the film, and in the end all you can really say is that this pasted-together storyline is rather methodically and unoriginaly  resolved.

The film appears to want to make an artistic conjecture about what it might be like to have another person’s soul inside you, but all Barthes can think to do along these lines is to keep showing these blurry scenes of people “seeing” into their foreign soul, scenes that are kind of like Harry Potter flashbacks (and that is NOT a compliment.) These “soul peering” scenes are totally lame because they are not beautiful or interesting and at the same time it is not clear what you are supposed to be taking away from them. They are just inscrutable filler. In the end, Paul Giamatti looks into his own soul – the pivotal moment of the film – and I have NO idea what his vision meant, nor do I care. Clearly something went wrong here.

Then there are the Russian gangsters, who like all movie gangsters are just cardboard pricks exhibiting zero emotional range, and are therefore completely and utterly boring to watch.

This film is muddled and confused. It wants to be a screwball comedy, a sort-of action film about Russian gangsters and “mules,” a arty mood piece about soul transplantation, and a witty-but-profound culture critique about the emptiness and desperation of modern western life. In my opinion, it fails at all of these.

Paul Giamatti, as usual, turns in a really good performance given the material he is stuck working with. In particular, the scenes of him acting Vanya with various souls in him were really great (probably because the beautiful Cechovian monologues  gave him something more to work with.) But they only last a grand total of about 3 minutes in a 100 minute film. It would have been better to explore this more and cut the damn gangsters! He really acts his heart out for the entire film, but in the end my conclusion is that he is simply too good for this material.

I have NEVER seen the marvelous Emily Watson give a nothing performance, but I guess there is a first time for everything. She couldn’t even convince me that she was Paul Giamatti’s wife, that’s how bad her performance was. Of course the writing and direction are to blame, not her. David Strathairn is good but a bit wasted in his doctor role. Everyone else was pretty forgettable.

This film is getting great reviews, but to me it is just another mediocre downer/comedy with semi-big stars in it, like Synecdoche, New York. It’s not a horendously bad film, like Synecdoche is, but it is rather dull and disapointing. Despite Paul Giamatti, I can’t really recommend it.