I will get the primary problem with the film out of the way: it can be quite melodramatic at times. I get that we're calling back to the old days of silent film, but there's a reason the medium was grown out of. Because a problem is inherent of a medium does not make it *ok* in that medium. It is not just melodramatic, it is melodramatic in a very silly way. The multiple instances in which Valentin inflicts suffering on himself starts to pile up in contriving ways. His wife is a plot device made to make his life a larger pile of despair. The climax of the movie in particular makes me groan.

Another thing I might mention is that while the character are thematically crafted, they lack a little bit of human touch. They come off more like symbols than really people at times.

But damn if that symbolism isn't striking! This is a film that is filled to the brim with creativity. Every motif in the film, right down to the title, adds both depth and universality to the themes of the movie. The movie's being silent gives us Valentin's perspective: his work is his life, and life is his work. He's so attached to his work that he sees the world as one big silent movie around him. The title further expresses his status as an artist: those who are truly attached to their work won't be able to grow with the needs of the public. A true artist will not give in to the public's demands. It is not until the end of the movie that he's able to accept "talkies" as a viable art form that we finally hear everyone's voice.

This movie is not a mere homage to a dead medium, it is a parable about how new cultures replace old cultures, and how crucial it can be not to be left behind. If only the character relationships were a bit more refined.

The movie constantly stumbles on what it wants to be and contradicts its eventual themes. Our main character, Tim learns he has the power to go back in time to events he remembers. When he asks about the butterfly effect, his dad replies by saying "well, civilization hasn't fallen yet, so I guess it doesn't apply," dodging the question entirely. Once our plot gimmick has been set-up while ignoring logic altogether, Tim uses this power to secure his own love life. Man, great ambitions, there. If I could change things about my past, I highly doubt I'd just try to secure my love life.

He moves to France and his Harvest Moon life finally begins. He has to find love before the first part of the game ends. But that's not a problem, since he can reset the game as much as he wants, so we feel no tension if anything goes wrong in his relationships. He can just, y'know, reverse the awkwardness. He then meets an "introvert" named Mary, of whom he ends up getting the phone number. Later, he learns his friend's play was a total disaster because an actor forgot key lines. Being the nice main character he is, Tim goes back and time and makes the play work. But in doing so, he finds that he'd never been able to meet Mary.

But, no worries! He eventually finds her at a museum, and introduces himself in the most uncomfortably awkward way possible. Before he can get to know her better, he finds out she'd met the boy of her dreams the previous week, a little after Tim and her should had met. He then goes back in time and stops her from meeting this boy, just so that he himself can take the prize. But, since he's the main character, it's okay if he manipulates her life like that.

Well, okay, we had to get the two lovers to meet eventually, right? If that's what it took to do so, let bygones be bygones. Now we're going to develop their relationship and the characters, right?

Nope. By the end of the movie, Mary is nothing more than Tim's "mate". We never see what's introverted, or misanthropic, or shy, or sweet, or anything about her. Life just moves on. Because this is supposed to be a movie about life, and how cool it is, and how it happens in the blink of an eye! Too fast of a blink to give the script any space to develop the characters past the typical family archetype, at that. They then get married and have kids. Tim's sister has a short arc involving her faulty relationship, which is about the fact that you don't need time travel to become happier. His dad is diagnosed with cancer, which ends up telling him that Tim needs to live the most boring, monotonous, repetitive life possible to truly enjoy it. Tim then concludes by saying he doesn't need time travel to enjoy his life.

I mean, because he's already happy, that is. You know, because he used time travel to make his life what it was to begin with.

This is an extremely melodramatic, sappy, overly sentimental, indecisive movie. If you're going to tell us that Tim doesn't need time travel to live a happy life, make sure he doesn't use it manipulatively to get to this point in life to begin with. Not only is that contradictory to your eventual theme, it completely kills the theme to begin with. And if you want to be sentimental and distinctly human, make sure your characters are distinctly human. Please. I had a hard time taking any of this seriously.

There is nothing funny about a group of perverts and 99% of the rest of the male population, also being perverts, fawn over the completely unobtainable girls, who lead them on and then kick the shit out of them. Oh, and there's the main character, who happens to be one of the few dudes in the whole world that isn't a pervert! Praise him, the almighty "likable" main character with a harem! Add in a few shitty dick jokes, and a lot of tasteless humor, and you have a formula for a really smelly movie. Not to mention, the long, overdone sex scenes that make you think "God, is she going to say 'uguu' already or not?!" I was going to compare the absurdity of this movie to hentai before I realized that this was basically porn.

Why do people make this stuff?

The characterisation of the main characters is both all over the place and completely undeveloped for three-quarters of the characters. Basically, only Hiro and his brother (and to some extent Baymax) get any sort of character development or actual shading. The other four of the "six" are just there. Interestingly (and reportedly this is because the originals were Japanese, and despite changing ethnicity/nationalities, Disney/Marvel didn't want to actually change the names..!) barely any of the characters have real names... so it's perhaps no surprise they really have thin/non-existent personalities, too.

There are real problems with tone, with plot, with heroism/villainy and with pretty-much everything else, too.


The first part/"third" of the film has nothing really to do with the rest of it. It's surely just to set up two things ... and neither of those are really necessary. We don't need the first, and the second still doesn't make much sense: Hiro's a young, semi-pre-pubescent teenager, so the mood changes and youthfulness explain everything necessary for the plot.

Hiding the motivation of the villain along with his/her identity is hardly a problem, but the attempts to de-fang all villains by giving them "reasonable" motivations takes something away from the heroism of their opponents/the heroes. Here, More to the point, the heroes here just decide in an instant to become heroes, makes their powered suits in a matter of hours and come together as a team within a few more. Which rolls back the years on superhero everything...!

It also flies in the face of the attempted (futurist) realism. I could accept that it's a parallel earth, that's it's futuristic, that's it's therefore more technologically-advanced than ours. Add to that the fact that Hiro is a genius without peer, and credibility seems to begin being stretched, but.. it's a superhero film, so that's OK, too. But then:

This also undermines the rest of the six. It suggests that their intellect and skills aren't just less than Hiro's, but significantly so. Taken individually, only Go Go really gets to stand on her own feet. Fred is painted as comic relief (and even his peers mock his comics/memorabilia interest/collection). The other two seem frivolous and nervous.

Plus the entirety of Superhero parts of the plot echoes very closely elements of The Avengers and Spider-man 2 (the villain even moves like Doc Ock!)