Metropia (2010)

What a waste of my time!!!

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

(spoilers are a real time saver)...Imagine a world, in the not so distant future, where people resemble CGI renderings of the "Team America: World Police" puppets...So lemme get this straight - natural resources dried up and the global economy collapsed as the 3 sentence text intro narrates for us. And yet, they were able to link up a continental metro system and keep it up and running? mmkay.Dandruff shampoo is used to read and manipulate the minds of the masses. Altho the shampoo doesn't eliminate dandruff, it is used by everyone (actually half of everyone), including bald people, ... unconditionally. (What did you think of my conditioner pun?) Maybe that shampoo is their only option because of a future shampoo monopoly. I mean, You can't just not wash your hair in grungy dysfunctional dystopiaville. Or maybe the hot blonde in the brainwashing ad was just too convincing. I don't know, everyone uses the same shampoo, just go with it.And listening in on your thoughts (as provided somehow by shampoo) from the other end is some dude at a desk. There's a one-to-one ratio between people on the shampoo and people being controlled. Half the population controls the other, but hey, they just work there, what else can they do?Look, I understand it's an art form and you gotta take liberties, but c'mon, this is just too dumb to be serious. I dunno, maybe I'm just too left brained for this one.The main character is just a "normal" guy us simpletons in the audience can identify with. Ah, how pleasantly belittling.The music was as empty as the blank expressions on that blonde girl's face.It was so dark I could barely see half the time.Some of the voice acting felt flat, forced, like read from the script. Comparing it to a cheap video game would be a slight exaggeration, but it made me think of such nonetheless.I used to enjoy dystopian movies, but I guess I'm getting burned out. What are they supposed to represent? The evil corporations? The ones that put high fructose corn syrup in everything? Little known fact - the only reason we know about high octane sugar is because they're required to give us an ingredient list.

So. Metropia. Well, I really wanted to like this film. I love science fiction, especially intelligent science fiction, but Metropia does not cut it. I didn't like the flat, one dimensional way they did the CGI, but that's just me. They wanted to try something different and it didn't work for me. However, I didn't find the whole thing visually interesting. The grayish, sepia tones helped establish the mood of the film, but too much of anything can become monotonous. In the first 'Alien' there's an undercurrent of dread, even before anyone dies, but the lighting changes depending on what part of the ship they're in. Even '1984' changes lighting more often! The dialogue is good, but hardly remarkable. The main character didn't evoke much sympathy. He's a bit TOO much of a schlump. Too much of an everyman to be interesting. The voices in his head do a good job of confusing him and the audience. Are they actual voices, or is he slowly losing his mind? However, that too is a bit confusing. And not in a good way. It turns out the corporation, run by an old, crusty, almost decrepit old businessman is in fact monitoring us all. They are feeding us instructions when we stray from the path of conformity and obedience. However, we don't learn to what end. It wasn't clear what they wanted to accomplish. If that was mentioned anywhere in the film, it was not clear. And to me, that's poor storytelling.I rented this on a Friday night, got about 45 minutes in and fell asleep. Never a good sign in a movie. A movie can be slow paced, but there still has to be dramatic tension. Or suspense. This movie did not have it. Of course, I should realize; any movie Vincent Gallo's involved in is going to plod along unbelievably slowly. The premise is good. The average person needing to wake up and not be controlled by corporations or advertising or whatever, is a good idea. I give the movie credit for what it attempts, even though it's been done many times before. However, the execution of this idea was pretty poor. Kind of like when the blonde tries to alert the protagonist to the danger and get him to help her. She tries to seduce him, unfortunately in her underwear instead of completely nude. (And since there was nudity earlier, the movie didn't hold back to be a nice PG film.)If she'd approached him stark naked, he might have found her impossible to resist. She too had a good idea, but it was very poorly executed.

It's a really great idea, the concept of the voices. And then taking it to another level. The animation might need a bit of time getting used to, but it does work excellent once you get into that mindset (no pun intended). You should be easily offended by nudity too, if you want to watch. There's not much of it, but there is some, so be careful if you don't like animated nudity then.The concept should win you over, if you like conspiracies and it will satisfy them too. A really good sci-fi movie with a great voice cast (if you have the disc, watch the voice recording feature) and some nice overall ideas then.

My subject line says it all. The film has an interesting animation style that kept me guessing, is it photography plus animation? Is it some incredibly realistic computer graphics plus obviously-animated human figures? But apart from some mild interest in the mechanics I found it overwhelmingly dull. It was quite derivative - as others have mentioned here, it was reminiscent of Blade Runner, with a 1984 theme. It also did not make a lick of sense. Despite some blather about the society being oil depleted etc. it was not clear how that related to anything, and it seemed to be about the evils of corporate capitalism controlling the political system (or something) but at the same time this evil entity seemed to be forcing people into very un-materialistic living standards. So it many have had socially critical points to make but they were made in a nonsensical way with lots of borrowing from far better fare.