BLISS – A Review by Hollywood Hernandez
New this week on Amazon Prime Video is a very odd science-fiction love story starring Owen Wilson and Salma Hayek. Wilson plays Greg Wittle, a man who is struck by a series of bad luck. He and his wife have recently divorced, and he’s stuck in a job he hates. The movie starts with him in his office, totally removed from reality, and making drawings of his fantasy house and the world he dreams of going to.
Next, he’s fired by his boss and in a fit of rage, he pushes him backward where he strikes his head on a desk and dies. Before he flees the scene Greg hangs him in the window by his shirt’s cuffs and heads across the street to have himself a drink.
There he meets Isabel, played by Salma Hayek, who convinces him that she has special powers and the world they are living in is not real. After she takes him to her home under a bridge where they end up with a romantic connection and they travel together to a different world. However, what makes them go to the parallel universe is a crystal drug so it’s hard to decide if they are actually in a different world or just hallucinating from the drugs.
Wilson and Hayek are great as a couple who seemingly become soulmates but that’s about all the highlights the movie has to offer. The movie also has some great special effects and lighting techniques that I also enjoyed. Writer and director Mike Cahill seems to be trying to make a statement with Bliss. Rather than making a straight-ahead science fiction movie, he gets bogged down in the “what ifs” of the fantasy world. Often in the movie, I had a hard time trying to figure out what exactly was going on.
Bliss is rated R with a run time of 1 hour and 43 minutes. On my “Hollywood Popcorn Scale” I rate the movie a MEDIUM. Bliss is free on Amazon Prime Video for subscribers.
