God, a self-hating alcoholic who treats His wife with contempt, spends his time programming new rules for existence to annoy, torture and frustrate His creation - humanity.
While His son (J.C) attempted to change to his cruel reign he failed. It is now the turn of God's daughter Ea to end Humanity's suffering - which she does by informing the world of the exact amount of time they have left to live and then returning to Earth to find 6 more Apostles and to write an all new Testament.
Sadly, however while the premise is full of promise, the cast generally good and the cinematography OK, it is just not that funny, clever or satisfying.
The film has energy, ideas and a certain charm but just cannot make it work it ends up a bit of a mess to be honest.
This film has three obvious problems;
1) Major identity problems: The film starts off in a Jean-Claude Jeunet style (think Amélie), but just not quite as clever, lacks pace and is frankly only mildly amusing.
Sadly, the comedy becomes more infrequent and the tone switches to serious drama for certain elements, then back to comedy, some philosophical musing, a ton of sex but then decides to drown itself in the surreal. So surreal in fact that the film loses its audience (the Gorilla scenes) as the pacing gets worse and the script is thrown in the bin.
The schizoid nature of the film ruins it - the strong narrative set up in the first 20-30 minutes of the film is thrown out of the window along with the humour.
This film could have been a great comedy about God, existence etc, instead it just becomes an undefinable mess, not really funny, not really thought provoking and not really very entertaining.
It ends bewilderingly with a scene that does not make any sense even within the loose rules for narrative that the film sets itself.
2) A very hit and miss script:
Simply put if you do not like surrealist humour then you will hate this film.
Reflections about God, life, existence and death are treated super seriously or joked about - it has some funny observations but these are exhausted half way in and later jokes are not very amusing aside from maybe 1 or 2.
The script is at times cringe-makingly preachy - full of pseudo intellectual/philosophical musings that go nowhere and sometimes feel like a first-year university student's drunken ramblings, for example the All New Testament scene on the beach makes light of the whole premise of the film as the Apostles laugh at their quotes - not really very funny.
It then just becomes embarrassing (poor Deneuve and the Gorilla). The script just does not hit any nails on the head and in my opinion because the film does not know what it wants to be half of the time.
3) An obviously limited budget: This is least of the films problems but the digital effects which are used sparingly throughout are at times awful (the starling scene for example) The end scene effects are even worse.
Conclusion
Overall a very disappointing, pseudo-philosophical mess of a film - not really thought-provoking or leaving the cinema-goer with any kind of message. It fails because it does have not enough budget for Jean Claude Jeunet style visuals, is not nearly as funny as say Monty's Pythons Meaning of Life or Life of Brian, nor is it surreal enough to be truly memorable. Watch on TV on a rainy day if you have nothing better to do.
While His son (J.C) attempted to change to his cruel reign he failed. It is now the turn of God's daughter Ea to end Humanity's suffering - which she does by informing the world of the exact amount of time they have left to live and then returning to Earth to find 6 more Apostles and to write an all new Testament.
Sadly, however while the premise is full of promise, the cast generally good and the cinematography OK, it is just not that funny, clever or satisfying.
The film has energy, ideas and a certain charm but just cannot make it work it ends up a bit of a mess to be honest.
This film has three obvious problems;
1) Major identity problems: The film starts off in a Jean-Claude Jeunet style (think Amélie), but just not quite as clever, lacks pace and is frankly only mildly amusing.
Sadly, the comedy becomes more infrequent and the tone switches to serious drama for certain elements, then back to comedy, some philosophical musing, a ton of sex but then decides to drown itself in the surreal. So surreal in fact that the film loses its audience (the Gorilla scenes) as the pacing gets worse and the script is thrown in the bin.
The schizoid nature of the film ruins it - the strong narrative set up in the first 20-30 minutes of the film is thrown out of the window along with the humour.
This film could have been a great comedy about God, existence etc, instead it just becomes an undefinable mess, not really funny, not really thought provoking and not really very entertaining.
It ends bewilderingly with a scene that does not make any sense even within the loose rules for narrative that the film sets itself.
2) A very hit and miss script:
Simply put if you do not like surrealist humour then you will hate this film.
Reflections about God, life, existence and death are treated super seriously or joked about - it has some funny observations but these are exhausted half way in and later jokes are not very amusing aside from maybe 1 or 2.
The script is at times cringe-makingly preachy - full of pseudo intellectual/philosophical musings that go nowhere and sometimes feel like a first-year university student's drunken ramblings, for example the All New Testament scene on the beach makes light of the whole premise of the film as the Apostles laugh at their quotes - not really very funny.
It then just becomes embarrassing (poor Deneuve and the Gorilla). The script just does not hit any nails on the head and in my opinion because the film does not know what it wants to be half of the time.
3) An obviously limited budget: This is least of the films problems but the digital effects which are used sparingly throughout are at times awful (the starling scene for example) The end scene effects are even worse.
Conclusion
Overall a very disappointing, pseudo-philosophical mess of a film - not really thought-provoking or leaving the cinema-goer with any kind of message. It fails because it does have not enough budget for Jean Claude Jeunet style visuals, is not nearly as funny as say Monty's Pythons Meaning of Life or Life of Brian, nor is it surreal enough to be truly memorable. Watch on TV on a rainy day if you have nothing better to do.