It was entertaining, but nothing very special to me. I haven’t read the book, so I’m not sure if that makes me a better or worse judge of the film. I enjoyed seeing the actors playing many different roles, but I became preoccupied with trying to pick out who was who.

Watching Cloud Atlas was like reading a poem, especially at first. It is fragmented almost to the point of senselessness and you have to force yourself to stop trying to figure things out. The future dialect was nearly impossible to understand at times, which was frustrating to me.

What bothered me most about it was that I didn’t feel like the film’s main message (everything is connected) was really conveyed. Yes, the same actors play roles in every story, but otherwise the stories themselves didn’t really connect. Nothing tied them together other than the fact that they were about people (with matching birthmarks?) making important decisions, which, I guess is what almost every story is about. I had hoped for more.