What the #$*! Do We Know?

Remember that bit in ‘The Matrix’ where the grating faux-Buddha kid solemnly told Keanu ‘there is no spoon’? Well, this is the 109-minute version of that conversation, with another smarty-pants youngster inviting another mundane sceptic – Marlee Matlin’s Amanda, a world-weary commercial photographer saddled with a kooky room-mate and yet another wedding gig – to take a trip down the rabbit hole, and for us all to tag along. Amanda’s story is the peg for a series of ontological digressions questioning the nature of reality and human experience: the film is divided between CGI-enhanced dramatic scenes and documentary talking heads from a barrage of academics and ‘experts’ holding forth on anything and everything from quantum physics, the shortcomings of rational materialism and God to peptide-based emotional addiction and ‘four-layer bio-bodysuits’. The scattershot approach leaves little time for any given argument to be developed (or even substantiated) and the credibility of those involved is left to the viewer to determine. May be of interest to stoned 15-year-olds.