Critic Reviews

Cahill is so effective at blurring the lines and making both “realities” feel equally plausible that it’s hard not to feel your own reality attenuating as you watch it. Owen Wilson and Salma Hayek, something of an odd couple on paper, are also perfectly cast.

Trippy and entertaining mind-bender.

Ultimately, no matter what angle you see Bliss from, the story converges on a choice and a question: Which world do you choose to live in? And what can bring a person back to reality?

Bliss isn’t really all that interested in trafficking in the stuff of mass-market science fiction: the bells and whistles, in the form of nifty hardware, special effects and the like. Rather, Cahill’s latest film is an exercise in existential inquiry.

Strip away the wiring, and Cahill’s film connects most tangibly as a fable about drug addiction – hardly a shock, with all the crystal-obsessed scurrying to make one grey reality bearable, or switch to another outright. He’s had more ingenious ideas, but the whole thing’s strangely charming.

Expect head-scratching, some non-sequiturs and lots of quirks and Bliss will mostly entertain and consistently baffle.

The emotional impact of those shots comes mainly from Wilson, who’s captured in several dialogue-free long takes. His signature drawl is silenced, and his face is forced to do work the screenplay hasn’t. He gives a weighty performance, delivered into a simulated void.

I wish the results were better, and a lot stranger. Cahill’s world-building has its moments, though. And the filmmaker did determine — correctly — that it’d be fun to have Bill Nye, the science guy, in a bow tie, portraying a sniffy scientific researcher.

With its blend of existential science fiction and character-based romance, it would seem to be as close to a can’t-miss premise as one can imagine yet, despite that, it somehow does miss – and by a wide margin.

Bliss is far more kooky and tedious than it is good, and it's so confusing that even the movie's sense of humor is a question mark.