Only disconnect

Cloud Atlas is part-sci-fi, part-thriller, part-romance, part-comedy, part-action flick, part-this, part-that and it all adds up to? A whole lot of not very much. Based on David Mitchell’s novel, this strains, laboriously, to capture that novel’s scope and complexity, but gets nowhere near, and takes three hours to get nowhere near. (If you are going to take three hours, you can’t get somewhere, at least? Is that too much to ask?)

Its problem isn’t lack of ambition. This cost $100 million, had three directors and stars multiple A-listers in multiple roles in multiple storylines. These A-listers include Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Susan Sarandon, Jim Broadbent, Jim Sturgess, Ben Whishaw and Hugh Grant, who adopts a variety of guises, and is still noticeably Hugh Grant, which has to be his gift to the world. And its message, that love lives on and all souls return and renew their bonds with each other in endless cycles of recurrence? I’m minded to think this is simply banal karmic humbug but, just in case, have put my name down for reincarnation.