one of them is that it has a kind of plodding narrative thatjumps across continents and through time periods in order to establish its backstory, and by the time we actually get to a new thing happening, we ve kind of vaguely lost interest. secondly, it has too many characters, so you never end up investing in anybody in particular. for example, if the film concentrated on kumail nanjiani s character or barry keoghan s character or something like that, you think, ok, fine, i can invest in this. as it is, itjust feels like there s a lot of moving parts. and the third thing is the special effects just look like that they look like special effects. they don t feel like they ve got heft or weight. so, you have this weird thing that, on the one hand, you ve got a great film maker who s known for making these intimate portraits of characters that are. they ring with truthfulness. and then, you have this, and you re watching the special effects and thinking, well,