Prime Video

Greg Wittle (Owen Wilson) meets a woman (Salma Hayek) who convinces him that reality is an illusion and that the real world lies only a brightly coloured pill away.

Using science fiction as a philosophical lens is nothing new. Indeed, writer and director Mike Cahill has previous. His earlier features Another Earth (2011) and I Origins (2014) while offering diminishing returns critically found considerable love amongst New Age audiences, those who embraced the sloppy smooshing of science and navel gazing found in insidious nonsense like What the #$*! Do We Know!? (2004), a movie that answered its own title unequivocally once it suggested water could be affected by emotions.

But this isn’t Cahill’s fault, they let simply anyone watch movies. Where he is utterly culpable is that the stale whiff of metaphor found in Bliss – found so pungently that it dominates all else – offers nothing to reward the viewer. What is the point it seems so single-mindedly determined to make? I’m not sure. Life is what we chose it to be? We don’t need 113 minutes of turgid cinema to tell us that. When subtext becomes so arrogant and brazen as to be text, the movie becomes nothing more than an argument and must thrive or wilt based on how well that argument is presented.

Why else should we watch this film? The performances? Owen Wilson is a frequent pleasure to watch as an actor, most particularly when working with Wes Anderson or surprisingly affordable sofas. Here he is as empty and directionless as the material he has to work with. Likewise Salma Hayek has shown us many times that she is capable of great performances, except here. But, again, turning the text she has to say out loud into believable dialogue is as impossible as being asked to emulsion one’s living room with spoiled milk. Hayek flings her Manic Pixie Dream Girl character at the camera with such blunt force one can’t help but suspect she finds it all as insulting as we do.

Story? No. As the precis above makes abundantly clear we’re dealing with an unambitious Matrix clone that can’t be bothered to develop that idea in a new direction. Or, indeed, anywhere.

Spectacle? Cinematography? The film contains one nice shot involving an improbable corpse, a crane and a window. It’ll take more than that for Cahill to live up to his title.

Verdict: As Joe Pantoliano’s Cypher might say: “Ignorance is Bliss.” 3/10

Guy Adams