Review of Sliding Doors (1998) by Matt W — 28 Jun 2013

Romance meets The Twilight Zone in this parallel universe romance.

I went in knowing nothing about the film, apart from that it had some kind of gimmick. And I do think that gimmick is a good word to describe the twist in this particular story, as the film did feel drawn out, and I think would have worked better as a short.

But it's not a short. And it works pretty well.

Paltrow does a reasonable British accent, and gives two good performances of the same character- so really she gives a general good performance. The film works, although it is a little contrived, and nears the edge of soap opera a couple of times, but it is a fine romance that should please the romantics of the world.

It definitely starts to feel a little repetitive after a while, and you start to just follow one story, and the problem I had was the story that I was more compelled with didn't end the way I wanted to etc. Romance.

The perfect comparison piece to this is Cloud Atlas as it has the same ideas in some respects, with the same characters- kind of, in different stories, but I believe Cloud Atlas worked as the stories were all different, while with this, it is the same story in a different structure, with the same characters.

So the film is always doomed to repetition.