I would rank this stupefyingly boring film as one of the worst movies that I have ever seen. It begins with a intriguingly fanciful premise – an actor having difficulty playing the role of Uncle Vanya resorts to having his "soul" removed by a mysterious company – yet spins it out in such a jarring and unmotivated fashion that the audience is never able to generate any real emotional connection to what he is doing or why. And while the film advertises itself as a comedy, it is as lively as a funeral march and never manages to contrive a single sequence that is able to raise even the weakest of whimsical smiles.
The actors flounder about unconvincingly, with Paul Giamatti playing himself as a spiritually dead wet blanket who fails to ignite any interest even after getting mixed up with the Russian Mafia when the situation begins to unravel, and David Strathairn draining what little energy is generated by the lifeless script in a performance of monumental insipidity. This tiresome mess begs comparison to the vastly superior "Being John Malkovich", but lacks any of the charm, invention, or dangerous hair-pin turns that made that film such a quirky delight. While "Cold Souls"' depicts as potentially an intriguing a premise, it is executed with such blandness that the meager audience in the theatre I saw the film at began filing out long before it drew to its airless conclusion.
The actors flounder about unconvincingly, with Paul Giamatti playing himself as a spiritually dead wet blanket who fails to ignite any interest even after getting mixed up with the Russian Mafia when the situation begins to unravel, and David Strathairn draining what little energy is generated by the lifeless script in a performance of monumental insipidity. This tiresome mess begs comparison to the vastly superior "Being John Malkovich", but lacks any of the charm, invention, or dangerous hair-pin turns that made that film such a quirky delight. While "Cold Souls"' depicts as potentially an intriguing a premise, it is executed with such blandness that the meager audience in the theatre I saw the film at began filing out long before it drew to its airless conclusion.