The Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer may have bitten off more than they—or anyone—could chew in attempting to make a film out of David Mitchell's enormous, past-and-future spanning novel Cloud Atlas. Starring Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, and a host of others, it's a visual treat, but critics aren't entirely satisfied:
- The "muddled, frustrating" movie doesn't live up to the book, writes Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times. It's clear the filmmakers "labored mightily" to adapt the book's many storylines onto the screen. But "attempts to be original are not enough, they have to succeed. ... Earthbound when it wants to be soaring, striving for a kind of profundity that is out of its grasp, this is simply not the film everyone hoped it would be."