What ultimately sinks Never Let Me Go is that it totally fails as a love story. With this material the audience should be sobbing its eyes out – unrequited love in childhood continuing on into adulthood, love stolen by a friend you feel inferior too, a slow but handsome and pure-hearted guy as the object of affection, desperately trying to make a last go of it late in the game, all the weird “donor overtones” and implicit musings on life, the amazing Carey Mulligan in the lead role … good heavens it certainly seems like there was a tear-jerker in their somewhere, doesn’t it?

Does that make Never Let Me Go a bad movie? Well, no, but as a result it does leave the viewer with a somewhat disappointed aftertaste. I mean, everything looks great in the film, Carey Mulligan is great at delivering the decently written narration, Keira is solid in her role (I continue to believe she is an under-rated actress.) The basic storyline is communicated in a subtle and low-key fashion. But the story doesn’t have much depth. The characters don’t talk very much, so you are always at arms length from them emotionally – instead, there’s a lot of long, mournful shots of them with music droning, that sort of thing. I get that this fits with the postmodern tone of the story, but at the same time it really limits the audience’s emotional investment in the film and in the plight of the characters. Never Let Me Go invites you to cursorily view chapters in their lives from afar, almost as still paintings, and imagine what they must be feeling. I prefer films that tell me what the characters are feeling in the characters own words. It’s just a lot more powerful and satisfying in the end. Compare this film to My Life Without Me, for example, and you will see in dazzling, horrifying detail just how inept Never Let Me Go is as an exploration of love, the emotions of our mortality, and the connection between the two.

I also found the title song, if you will, to be rather distracting. It’s a song called “Never Let Me Go,” done in the style of 50’s female crooning. But it sounds fake. It’s clearly not from the period in question, as everything about it is a little off – the singing, the sound quality, even the composition itself. Since the filmmakers clearly wanted this song to become an emotional touchstone for the audience, this is a big problem.

Carey Mulligan is an amazing star with an amazing voice and look, but she has relatively little to do in this film. Keira comes across better as her character is more clearly drawn. The fellow playing Tom (Andrew Garfield) is really good, but his quiet, emotional character tends to get lost in a sea of quietly suffering characters about whom we know relatively little. All the supporting performances are fine, I suppose, but they don’t bring much to the film because the film is so flat and uncompelling. I mean, think about the scene early in the movie where the new teacher “spills the beans” to the students about their role in life – I can’t imagine a more lifeless and uninteresting way of communicating this information to the viewer.

Never Let Me Go: It’s not bad, especially compared to most of the dreck we are subjected to nowadays. I just found it a little dull and a little disappointing.