Review of Transcendence (2014) by Mosstromo — 16 Apr 2014

A bloated and boring mess that tries to shove too many bland and puerile ideas through a syphon as narrow as the mind of its screenwriter(s).

It is not new nor rare that scientists are almost always presented as a mad lot who single-handedly want to take on the world or mold it to their perpetually selfish designs, nor anything new about artists (used loosely in this case) attempting to tell audiences of their fears that humans are trying to cross some line only meant for some gods to be treded on. This film is no different, specially on that last thing, only a lot more ham-handed in its urgency to do so by having Dr. Depp say it with the calmest of aplombs, "Do not all scientists aspire to create their own gods?" (paraphrasing the crap) to zero discomfitance from anyone in an audience supposedly made of university students and other fellow scientists in the hall.

So all of that is normal so far. What is deeply weird is that it also treats as extremists and lunatics the group that opposes the advancements in the technology Dr. Depp is spear-heading, or any person that joins them later on the film for whatever flimsy or implausible reasons (don't bother trying to keep track of where or why allegiances are made or broken, it will only destroy neurons you may prefer to preserve). This could've been the intention of the filmmakers, attempting either a statement that all actions in such a topic live in a grey area or simply as a "surpise" twist device. Whatever the real reason it hardly makes it any better handled.

The story, although as painfully simple as the lack of understanding of its subject matter renders it to be, is convoluted beyond repair and made utterly impregnable by the enormous amount of cringe-worthy childish ideas and fears it wants to cram in its (cruelly long) duration.

The cast is wonderful. Any of the main participants is of stature enough to be able to provide some redeeming qualities to almost any bad film, by her/himself. But not even the presence of 5 highly accomplished thespians could accomplish such a gargantuan proposition. The result is something like the delivery of Nachos by a cordon blue cook, those will be the best Nachos ever served but they will still be junk-food.

I will not bother any one with further examination of the myriad singularity-level plot holes, the sad immaturity of dialogues, topic-handling or character motivations, because the core point of this superficial comment on the film can be summarized with the few next words: Do not bother.