We watched The Cloud Atlas last weekend. I didn’t like it. And the more I think about it, the less I like it.

The point of the movie, and I won’t be giving anything away by starting with this, is that everything we do connects us with everything everybody else does. To bring you this message, the directors pared their movie down to a running time just eight minutes short of three hours. Three hours of “everything is connected … everything is connected … everything is connected.” Think you can handle that? If you can, you’re a much more patient viewer than I am.

The movie starts with Tom Hanks speaking a futuristic slang that we had to turn the subtitles on to understand. The movie is a hash of six different stories in different time periods and a pretty big chunk of the movie was spent in this distant future where everybody spoke like a drunken Jar Jar Binks. That right there made me want to strangle all the script writers.

Excuse me, the movie isn’t a “hash,” it’s an “interweaving” according to several descriptions I found on teh intarwebs. Each story takes place during a different era: The first story is about a young lawyer on a sea voyage to New Zealand in 1849; the second story is about a young composer in 1936; and so on. The thirteen characters in each of the six stories are supposed to be “souls” who are influenced by, and may even be aware of the presence of all the other souls in their time as well as in every other era.

Although this idea intrigues me, it never seems to amount to anything as far as the people in the movie are concerned. For instance, the composer writes to his friend that he has been reading a book written by the lawyer on a sea voyage. If the composer’s actions were influenced at all by the lawyer’s story, though, I missed it. Same goes for the intrepid journalist who reads the letters written by the composer to his friend. The journalist is obviously touched by their correspondence, but when she takes action in her own life it’s because her father was a strong influence on her, not because of the composer.

Then there are the thirteen souls. I’m not sure, but I think I’m supposed to believe that they’re the same thirteen souls from one era to the next, or at least that’s what seems to be implied by having the same actors play them in each of the six stories. But what I don’t get is, why? If the movie answered this question, I missed it again. Why does a soul move from time to time, acting a new part in each new life? They don’t seem to be any better for it. In the sea voyage segment, Tom Hanks is a murderous asshole. In the musical segment, he’s an extortionate asshole. In the nuclear power segment he’s a whistle-blowing nice guy. In the Cavendish segment, he’s a murderous asshole again. And no matter what time Hugo Weaving appears in, he’s an asshole. By the way, if you want to see something that’ll put you off your dessert for the rest of the week, Hugo Weaving in drag. Nuff said.

Those are two pretty intriguing ideas, but their execution, and this whole movie, totally baffled me. I may be a little clumsy when it comes to catching all the intricacies of a story’s plot, but in three hours I think I should have been handed at least one gimmie. I just didn’t get any of it. On my one to five scale, I give it a two. Not saying you shouldn’t see it, just saying I wouldn’t recommend it.