828. Multiplicity (1998)

Starring: Michael Keaton, Andie MacDowell, Zack Duhame

Director: Harold Ramis

Running Time: 117 mins

Multiplicity is an American film about a man who wishes he could have more time with his family, as well as being able to keep up his work, so he decides to get himself cloned after being approached by a geneticist, but, inevitably, complications arise.

This isn’t as annoying a film as I expected at first. It’s such a simple story that it doesn’t seem like it’s trying too hard to be intelligent as well as fun. However, the main problem with this film is that it’s really not funny. I didn’t laugh once. It may not be irritating, but it’s painfully dull and not at all entertaining.

Horribly, this film lasts almost two full hours. Why? As I said, it’s such a simple story, and very repetitive too (seeing as it’s all about clones), but when I was watching this, I just couldn’t understand why it kept going on, making me more and more bored as it dragged out at a painfully slow pace.

The problem with the comedy is that it isn’t specific enough. It’s not funny, and that’s clear enough, but the reason for that is that the film tries to implement all sorts of different comedic genres, including slapstick, romantic comedy and some other rubbish that just wasn’t funny, and that means it gets all jumbled up into the mess that is this film.

Michael Keaton’s performances in this is probably the thing that annoyed me the most. At first, he and his clone are pretty cool, and it seemed to me like there’d be some fun sparring between the two, but when the other two clones come along, with these irritating exaggerated personalities, it just becomes a huge mess, and it’s just annoying to watch Keaton trying to do all sorts of different characters at once.

Finally, I was disappointed by how this film randomly turned into a generic rom-com. It starts off as a fun fantasy romp, full of (attempted) comedy and a cool premise, but by the end, it forgets to even try comedy, and turns into the worst thing a film can be: a romantic comedy without the comedy, and just boring romantic drama.

Overall, this gets a 4.7, because although it’s not particularly annoying (apart from Michael Keaton), it’s got a boring story, failing to turn a good premise into a good movie, and incredibly unfunny comedy.