'Bliss' Review: Mike Cahill's Sci-Fi Fable Misses the Mark
A promising premise gets a dull, lead-footed treatment.
Andrew Barker, provided by
FacebookTwitterEmail
Running time: Running time: 104 MIN.
Courtesy of Amazon Studios
The biggest challenge of discussing Mike Cahill’s “Bliss” lies in describing its premise without making it sound considerably wilder and more interesting than it actually is. In short, the film stars Owen Wilson as a sad-sack office drone who, after accidentally killing his boss, is rescued by an intense, shamanistic homeless woman played by Salma Hayek, who not only informs him that they are soulmates, but also that they are among the few flesh-and-blood humans inhabiting a complex computer simulation, and by imbibing the right combinations of colorful crystals they can bend the laws of physics, and also travel to a paradisiacal alternate reality where their days consist of lounging on yachts and hobnobbing at parties with Bill Nye and a holographic Slavoj Žižek. See? Sounds intriguing enough, doesn’t it?