Review by Stephen Tronicek
Entanglement is the type of movie that is so determined to convince you that it is a bad movie that it almost becomes one and then doesn’t. The first and second acts are somewhat insufferable the first time around, to be honest, a weird amalgamation of extreme dark humor and twee romance…but then the movie changes and becomes quite a bit different. That change would constitute a spoiler, so nothing about it will be mentioned here, but thankfully said change turns into something of a sad exploration of idealism.
Entanglement starts with Ben (Thomas Middleditch) attempting to kill himself. Following his failure to do so he finds himself despondent, only talking to his next-door neighbor, Tabby (Diana Bang) and suddenly finding the girl of his dreams Hanna (Jess Weixler), who may be his long-lost almost adopted sister.
With this original premise, Entanglement runs circles around its own tail becoming kind of terrible and ridiculous and oddly complicated. There’s a running metaphor through the beginning of the film concerning quantum entanglement that, in the context of the twist, is actually quite good but lacking that context comes off trite and bitter. Hanna is the definition of a manic pixie dream girl (I know it’s overused but this movie literally has pixie dust at one point) and is a pretty boring characterization of one (which is saying something). Overall, the effects look shabby and artificial and everything doesn’t look right. It looks like a dumb fantasy conjured up by a sad man.
But here’s the thing, without giving away too much, the movie actually agrees with you on that front as all the artificiality at its center soon bubbles up to reveal a ruthlessly funny, sad, and cynical core driving the film forward. The lack of subtlety in execution does make one wish that there was a more delicate way to pull off the twist, but going for high drama does actually make the film affecting and sad in a way that more subtlety wouldn’t allow for.
Entanglement is a film that gives one pause because it spends long enough being genuinely bad that it is hard to ignore that in an effort to deconstruct bad screenwriting and filmmaking, the screenwriter and filmmakers have just made a film that is bad…until it is not. Overall, the package maybe keeps the illusion up too long, but that is ultimately redeemed by the moment when the movie actually becomes good (or the third act). Two thirds bad movie and one third telling you that the last two were bad is just odd to judge I guess, even if it does get REALLY good when that last third actually arrives.
Entanglement gets a 3 out of 5.
