I saw the poster for this movie and thought. Hmm, Jude Law, haven't seen him in anything for a while, but he's good... OOOH! Wong Kar-Wai directing his first Hollywood film! Holy Crap! Wow! Natalie Portman! She never chooses a bad film! What a perfect date movie! Finally a film that I will no doubt enjoy and not have to drag a girl to kicking and screaming!

I don't know why I keep placing my hopes for films anywhere above the same level of hope I hold for toothpaste being on sale when I go to the drug store. Especially when artistic directors are taken from their home and placed in the stifling cages of L.A. As soon as I entered the theater, I remembered; 'oh wait, Wong Kar-Wai is the one who makes all those artistic romance films... Chan Wook-Park is the South Korean director that I'm actually a huge fan of.' Oh well, a good non-blockbuster film is still going to be entertaining and maybe a little enlightening. I could not have been more wrong.

The movie is not a romance film at all, so my date got bored fast. It is in fact a creepy-ass road flick about a girl finding herself amidst the confusion of the loss of what she felt was true love. My jaw dropped. If I had just looked online. If I had done a little more research, I wouldn't be stuck in this theater. It was too late. Best to breathe and dive in. A master director has to have a good reason to choose this story to present to the public.

I couldn't be more wrong again. The cinematographic styling is annoying. It floats around like a daydream and leaves what seems to be the most vital aspect of the scene hazy and out of focus. The framing itself is bland and at times even ugly. The story is a travesty of modern writing that tries to sling together 5 different times and locations with the grace of a hippopotamus protecting its territory.

So the gist of it is: Elizabeth breaks up with the love of her life. She meets Jeremy (Jude Law), a cafe owner at the strangest coffee shop ever concocted (now it's not strange looking, that would have made the film somehow interesting. It is strange because Jude Law's character's eccentricities are ridiclous as he tries to wax poetic about philosophy and food simultaneously. He also keeps a strange running list in his head of every customer, what they have eaten and personal details about their love lives. And random brawls seem to be common place in this quaint little pie and coffee shop. It's simply too much to handle). Jeremy and Elizabeth begin to hit it off. Elizabeth eats an ungodly amount of blueberry pie like a starving sow and leaves fragments of the decimated dessert all over her face and then passes out on the bar. Jeremy licks her face clean while she sleeps (I want to make a special note of this and how unromantic it was. The two of them wax romantic and philosphic while cramming their faces (quite unsettling) and then 'bam' mouth rape. No one in the theater seemed to find this the least bit romantic either, especially not my date). Then, Elizabeth just up and leaves town. She settles in some podunk burg in Texas. I can't remember what happens, I swept my mind of that part of the film... Then she goes to vegas? No, some other shithole mid-west town, then vegas, no, first reno or some crappy hole-in-the-wall Nevada town, then Vegas. Along the way, bridges are built, bonds are tied, people die, food is eaten and money is made. All the while, Elizabeth's character takes an observer's role while we are forced to observe the unusual redneck tedium of the people around her rambling life.

It was like a bunch of short stories that in the end the viewer is supposed to put together and use to evaluate how Elizabeth has grown through her attempt to run away from her heartbreak. And in a way all the people around her are running from their own heartbreak and in the end aren't we all. UGHHH. I couldn't take it. To make things worse Norah Jones plays the role of Elizabeth. When I saw her as top billing on the poster, I thought 'huh. Isn't she a singer? Oh well, ol' Mr. Wong must have chosen her for a reason!' The reason must have been that he's in love with her and wanted a chance to meet her and work closely with her. There can't be many other reasons for this risk, because she butchers every line and is in no way believable or interesting in the title role. From the first moment she opened her mouth, I could only think, I hope Natalie Portman enters the film soon. She does not. She is only there for 15 minutes at the end and even her role is boring. She's in a freaking poker scene for God's sake! Poker is not filmically interesting! It was okay in James Bond, because that was just bad ass and there were all sorts of bad guys, but not in a romance film or any film for that matter. Poker is a fad. Plus the emotional current that runs through a game does not translate to a scripted narrative!

For the last 30 minutes of this film, I was simply saying to myself "When will this end? Please end." I became so frustrated at the half-assery that I was watching that I actually said this outloud without quite realizing it, only to hear my date agree "honestly..."

Do not see this movie. It is every level of awful from script to shot to acting and everything in between. I'll do you a justice and tell you how it ends: Jude law licks more blueberry pie off of Norah Jones' face. Gross