I'm having an impossible time giving any clue about the plot without spoiling any of it, so that will figure into this review. This was a mixed bag, with some really fantastic ideas, but also a certain amount of material and handling that brought the overall project down.
I'll start with what went wrong. The role that the viewer plays seems to change around. Sometimes we're just an observer, but occasionally, there's a narrator, and this seems kind of jarring. It may have just been that the time between each voiceover was a little too long. There are occasionally sequences, shown in a smaller aspect ratio, as if we are being screened short films. This is fine, but it's a strange approach, since it usually lightens the mood, especially against material that would otherwise be pretty dark.
I didn't care for the romantic plot line. It was useful, mostly for creating a son for him to be concerned about, but for the most part, I didn't like her, and she didn't seem to offer as much to the story as expected.
There's an interesting satirical edge to this story, which is much more compelling, and the movie would have been better served by focusing more closely on that. The main focus of the story is on advertising, and the ability it has to shape the behaviors of a large segment of the population. Massive spoiler here, but the main part of the story starts with a variety of fast food executives wanting to deal with their dropping revenues. The advertising guru offers a solution that is well beyond the means of a conventional advertising campaign - to change the standard of beauty to make it acceptable to be fat.
This works, and the main character takes the fall as part of the plan. As he figures things out, and becomes able to see the strange monsters that run our desires, he decides that the best thing he can do is get rid of advertising.
A peculiar movie, and uneven, but it's still worth a watch.
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