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BLISS (2021) – Review – We Are Movie Geeks

Review

BLISS (2021) – Review

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With January finally, in your rear-view mirror, do you still feel part of a sluggish rut, as though one day just blends into the next with barely a change in course? With current events as they are, this may resonate with most folks. Some may wonder if there’s a switch that just needs to be flipped in order to “break out” and go to your “happy place”. That’s certainly true of the hero of a new flick. He’s in a miserable “fog” that seems to haunt his every second. Luckily a chance meeting (or is it) meeting provides that “push” that jolts him out of the mundane and into, what seems, a state of pure BLISS.

That unlikely hero mentioned earlier is Greg Wittle (Owen Wilson), who’s an executive in a big company headquartered in a sprawling urban area. He spends most of his days avoiding the “higher-ups” while he draws elaborately detailed sketches of his dream home in paradise and the exotic beauty who also occupies that “space”. But he’s somewhat “tethered” to reality by his daughter from his previous marriage, who’s adamant about his attendance at her college graduation. Greg assures her that he’ll be there, just as his latest “dodge” fails and he must march into the firm’s top floor suite for a “meeting”. In the first of many surprises, his dismissal ends in a tragedy that propels him into the temporary sanctuary of the bar across the street. There, he’s beckoned by a mysterious woman named Isabel (Salma Hayek) who seems somehow “familiar”. She tells him that he, like her, doesn’t really belong “here’ and can alter events and control behaviors just by concentration and the wave of her hand …which she demonstrates. The couple then quickly departs for her ramshackle “under the highway” home to plot a course of action. After a rest, Greg realizes that she is the woman of his dream-induced drawings. But soon their retreat is over, as they begin a journey to find the source of the rare “yellow crystal” that will set things “right”. Meanwhile, Greg’s daughter Emily (Nesta Cooper) starts her own quest to track him down. Isabel reminds him that the clock is “ticking” and dangerous forces while try and stop them. Can these crystals really be the solution? Will they open his eyes to a different “reality”?

This film is an offbeat “hybrid’, a mixing of romance, futuristic/fantasy, and suspense/thriller. In support of the former, all hinges on the two main leads, who don’t have a “meet-cute”, but rather a meet “odd”.  Wilson makes good use of his halting dialogue delivery as the, in the opening minute, befuddled, distracted Greg who seems to be floating above the business (whatever it is) chaos. After a catastrophe “wakes” him, he’s in full panic mode until Isobel “shatters his state”. From there Wilson is the affable, still stunned everyman who’s in a heightened “amazed” mode while enjoying the playful aspect of his new “talents”. Hayek, as in many of her past “rom-coms”, is the other-worldly goddess who “rocks the world” of a stuffy “suit”. But here’s she also the sexiest guide/mentor we’ve seen on screen as she prods Greg to open his mind while exhorting him to sprint to his destiny. With her dreadlocks and “found fashions” Hayek embodies the earthy, free-spirited street sorceress of this urban fantasy. Cooper as the concerned loving daughter helps ground the trippy tale with her passionate performances. And kudos for casting Bill Nye in a small role as,…well, a “super” science guy.

Writing/director Mike Cahill (ANOTHER EARTH) excels in delineating the shift in the tone of the story’s often convoluted structure. In the film’s first half we’re in a place perhaps a couple of years ahead of our own, with a city given over to marauders by night, and whose streets are clogged by economic strife (and protests) by day. After the revelations of Isabel, things take a clunky turn, especially with an extended unfunny slapstick sequence at a “roller disco” as she and Greg decide to dispense some payback via lots of silly pratfalls and tumbles. From there it’s a short sprint to a pseudo-MATRIX  “twist” (complete with big bubbling clear tanks with floating braaains) and a sun-washed-out “utopia” that’s a cross between an “all-inclusive” resort infomercial and the “pleasure planet’ where Capt. Picard got his “groove back” in a late 80s STNG. This leads to some goofy SF “gobbled-goop” involving holographic AI breaking out of the “program” and a military siege. And if that’s not enough, we get a ludicrous police stand-off/shoot-out as Greg must make the “big decision”. What starts as an unlikely romance (though Wilson and Hayek seem more like pals) crumbles into a lackluster copy of something that the SyFy basic cable channel would place to fill a weekend timeslot. The duo deserves better than this clumsy clone that inspires the opposite of BLISS.

2 out of 4

BLISS streams exclusively on Amazon Prime beginning Friday, February 5, 2021.

Jim Batts was a contestant on the movie edition of TV's "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" in 2009 and has been a member of the St. Louis Film Critics organization since 2013.