Watched a film called Harmony over the weekend and man, do I wish I never wasted my time.  It tries so hard to be thought provoking that it just turns into a very dialogue heavy, very boring experience.

The story is about a utopia. Earth was nearly wiped of all humans so they came up with a system where their safety was paramount. They created a system where nanotechnology was used to relay information about human bodies so it could be eradicated. You even get to preview people you meet through your eyes which sounds cool but it’s not. Literally everything is decided for you from your height to your breast size.  Three girls decide they don’t want their lives to be decided for them so the only way to get round it is suicide only it didn’t work for 2 of them.

Fast forward a few years and all of a sudden, there’s people killing themselves in the thousands randomly.  Turns out the friend didn’t die and she’s on a mission to make the powers that be start the Harmony procedure which releases a reset button on everyone, erasing free will and making everyone mindless robots. She was angry that she was allowed to have these feelings and ultimately kill herself so she figures that if people weren’t allowed to think, this existence would be tolerable.

Do we really need a utopia? Does free will screw us up? What does it mean to be human? This movie asks all these questions and has an ending that’s so inevitable because ultimately there is still a higher power in control.

It reminds me a bit of I Robot and The Matrix where humans are a commodity, only being kept alive for the purpose of simply existing.  But whereas those films were good, this is just a complete borefest. Listening to everyone’s opinions and thoughts about their existence is something that I feel the audience is meant to do when you finish the film, not listen to a script that rambles on to try and get their point across.

Anyways, I have spoken way too long about a film I’m angry about.  Angry at the script. Angry at the lack of action but mostly angry that it took two hours of my life.  I will say that the mix of cgi and traditional animation was good and that the graphic suicide scenes were cool.  I give this film a 4/10. It’s bad. I was gonna give it an average 5 but it doesn’t deserve to be called average.   DT

Read our latest review of this film from another Junkyard contributor… Harmony