Anyone familiar with that hipster flick "Primer" might get an inkling just how confusing, muddled and outright moronic "Identicals" is. Actually, even "Primer" is like "Dumbo" compared to this - simplistic: that should tell you quite a lot. I've seen over 3,700 movies so far, and I've never - literally never - seen a movie as utterly devoid of sense and logic as this almost randomly put-together drivel. There is no point to this mess, none whatsoever.
What kind of a world do the characters inhabit? No info. Present or future? Zip. Why are people being altered? Nope, the director doesn't know either. For what purpose are they being cloned? Sorry, nothing. Who else knows about this mysterious corporation aside from the people it pointlessly tortures? Can't help you there, because there's literally not even a hint of a clue of an indication to even contemplate answering that question. What changes about the main character, if he even does change? Nope, sorry. Which is the real brunette? Nope. What the hell is going on? I have no clue; no-one does. (That includes the few glue-sniffing hipsters who convinced themselves that they understood this mess.) Why does the corporation resort to beating up its clients when their scientific methods fail to work? (Admittedly, that was kind of funny, if unintentionally. Imagine that: a mega-powerful corporate entity that devises all these advanced technological cloning/brainwashing/whatever techniques, and yet they resort to the old-boot-in-the-groin method when things don't go as planned! Very Python-like.) What's the basic story? I really couldn't tell you, and neither could the lazy writer-director.
Who is what and where is why? Now we're getting closer. That's more like the kind of question this movie deserves, because idiotic movies don't deserve intelligent/normal questions. So in that vein, who's the guy who said that thing just before that thing happened that made no sense just after the main character said something to that other guy? I can't answer that either, but somehow I'm more at ease with such questions, when it comes to "reviewing" a pile of pig-dung such as this pretentious, "arty" mess.
The only clues you ever get in this pile of scorpion-vomit is in the first 5 minutes: they tell you that the movie will be incomprehensible and unwatchable. So what I said earlier about the movie not offering any clues whatsoever is not entirely true, technically speaking at least. Such is the blatant incompetence of this movie's coke-sniffing "auteur" that the movie's first 5 minutes already prepare you for an excruciatingly dull experience. Not only is the utter confusion of the script very obvious from the get-go, but the movie's extremely slow pace becomes a serious problem soon thereafter.
Alex, your cue.
I kid you not, oh my Brothers, but when I viddied how boring this movie is, I started fast-forwarding it and the like. Despite that, oh my Brothers, the movie still seemed to move at a snail's pace! Suddenly I had the urge for a bit of the old' ultra-violence. I viddied myself tolchoking the actors and the director and everyone else involved in this gloopy film, and what heavenly visions of the red red kroovy I had, oh my Brothers! It was as beautiful as Beethoven's 9th to imagine myself and my three droogs smashing the director's empty golova. We always rather enjoyed beating up on those sophistos which you may know as hipsters these days, oh my Brothers, but for this scribbler-director our gang would have had a special kind of horrorshow cocktail of chains and nozhys reserved.
Thank you, Alex, always a pleasure to hear your take.
Sure, it doesn't take much to get Alex to go mental on people, waving around with his fists and knives, but surely anyone who saw the film must share at least the basic sentiment of Alex. This shoddy film does indeed move at a snail's pace and has absolutely zero logic. Literally nothing is explained to the suffering viewer who doesn't get 5 unknowns and 23 "knowns" so that he at least has a mathematical shot at finding the answers. No, this is an unsolvable riddle, with 29 unknowns and maybe 2 or 3 "knowns". And lest you fall into that classic hipster trap of thinking that your imaginary mighty intellect can figure this out as some kind of a puzzle movie, rest assured that there ARE no answers because this isn't a riddle. Anyone who mistakes random garbage for an intellectual riddle needs a good tolchoking from Alex and his droogs. And I mean that with the best of intentions: the pummeling might result in an accidental lobotomy which I am sure greatly increases odds of "de-hipstertization".
Come to think of it, I am not even sure this non-cinematic aberration can qualify as a movie. It has actors, yes. But it has no plot.
The overacting by the lead actor doesn't help either. This chump looks like a kid who just got out of drama school (the Nick Cage department), raring to show what he's got. He hasn't got squat: no charisma at all. But at least he has a penchant for contorting his face whenever playing the evil twin, which is good if you're into cheesy, broad performances and other types of celluloid buffoonery. I hated the female lead too; if that's attractive and sexy, I don't know what's ugly then.
What kind of a world do the characters inhabit? No info. Present or future? Zip. Why are people being altered? Nope, the director doesn't know either. For what purpose are they being cloned? Sorry, nothing. Who else knows about this mysterious corporation aside from the people it pointlessly tortures? Can't help you there, because there's literally not even a hint of a clue of an indication to even contemplate answering that question. What changes about the main character, if he even does change? Nope, sorry. Which is the real brunette? Nope. What the hell is going on? I have no clue; no-one does. (That includes the few glue-sniffing hipsters who convinced themselves that they understood this mess.) Why does the corporation resort to beating up its clients when their scientific methods fail to work? (Admittedly, that was kind of funny, if unintentionally. Imagine that: a mega-powerful corporate entity that devises all these advanced technological cloning/brainwashing/whatever techniques, and yet they resort to the old-boot-in-the-groin method when things don't go as planned! Very Python-like.) What's the basic story? I really couldn't tell you, and neither could the lazy writer-director.
Who is what and where is why? Now we're getting closer. That's more like the kind of question this movie deserves, because idiotic movies don't deserve intelligent/normal questions. So in that vein, who's the guy who said that thing just before that thing happened that made no sense just after the main character said something to that other guy? I can't answer that either, but somehow I'm more at ease with such questions, when it comes to "reviewing" a pile of pig-dung such as this pretentious, "arty" mess.
The only clues you ever get in this pile of scorpion-vomit is in the first 5 minutes: they tell you that the movie will be incomprehensible and unwatchable. So what I said earlier about the movie not offering any clues whatsoever is not entirely true, technically speaking at least. Such is the blatant incompetence of this movie's coke-sniffing "auteur" that the movie's first 5 minutes already prepare you for an excruciatingly dull experience. Not only is the utter confusion of the script very obvious from the get-go, but the movie's extremely slow pace becomes a serious problem soon thereafter.
Alex, your cue.
I kid you not, oh my Brothers, but when I viddied how boring this movie is, I started fast-forwarding it and the like. Despite that, oh my Brothers, the movie still seemed to move at a snail's pace! Suddenly I had the urge for a bit of the old' ultra-violence. I viddied myself tolchoking the actors and the director and everyone else involved in this gloopy film, and what heavenly visions of the red red kroovy I had, oh my Brothers! It was as beautiful as Beethoven's 9th to imagine myself and my three droogs smashing the director's empty golova. We always rather enjoyed beating up on those sophistos which you may know as hipsters these days, oh my Brothers, but for this scribbler-director our gang would have had a special kind of horrorshow cocktail of chains and nozhys reserved.
Thank you, Alex, always a pleasure to hear your take.
Sure, it doesn't take much to get Alex to go mental on people, waving around with his fists and knives, but surely anyone who saw the film must share at least the basic sentiment of Alex. This shoddy film does indeed move at a snail's pace and has absolutely zero logic. Literally nothing is explained to the suffering viewer who doesn't get 5 unknowns and 23 "knowns" so that he at least has a mathematical shot at finding the answers. No, this is an unsolvable riddle, with 29 unknowns and maybe 2 or 3 "knowns". And lest you fall into that classic hipster trap of thinking that your imaginary mighty intellect can figure this out as some kind of a puzzle movie, rest assured that there ARE no answers because this isn't a riddle. Anyone who mistakes random garbage for an intellectual riddle needs a good tolchoking from Alex and his droogs. And I mean that with the best of intentions: the pummeling might result in an accidental lobotomy which I am sure greatly increases odds of "de-hipstertization".
Come to think of it, I am not even sure this non-cinematic aberration can qualify as a movie. It has actors, yes. But it has no plot.
The overacting by the lead actor doesn't help either. This chump looks like a kid who just got out of drama school (the Nick Cage department), raring to show what he's got. He hasn't got squat: no charisma at all. But at least he has a penchant for contorting his face whenever playing the evil twin, which is good if you're into cheesy, broad performances and other types of celluloid buffoonery. I hated the female lead too; if that's attractive and sexy, I don't know what's ugly then.