A powerful corporation's attempt to get complete control over a universal virtual reality medium that has become the epicenter of a diminished society in the future and the fight waged against it by a handful of highly-skilled gamers is portrayed in this Spielberg sci-fi film. Spielberg's knack for futuristic storytelling is at work here, but it is ultimately overwhelmed by the film's many, many mistakes. There is a panoply of cultural references here, but it's so layered that you might just ignore it after a certain point. Hearing people in this film rattle off one cultural reference after another can become distracting, maybe even annoying.

Even after you accept this film's inane premise and its risible presentation, it is difficult to sustain interest simply because the film goes on and on and on. Long before the overdue climax, you likely will have lost any emotional investment in where everything is going, for a number of reasons. In the end, the film turns out to be a moralizing parable about the divide between virtual fantasy and real life. This is a perplexing way to tie everything together because it nullifies most of the film's story and renders the two hours and change you've spent on the subject matter to be fruitless. Instead of taking this preachy stance, the film could have just kept quiet and settled for mere B-movie status.

I don't know the degree to which this film departs from its source material and I don't care. With or without the book, the film fails on its own because it gives us little compelling reason to become, let alone stay firmly invested in its silly premise, one which it appears to abandon in the end. Trying to make us care about a virtual reality universe for more than two hours and then largely jettisoning it, kind of renders the film a nullity. It's never a good thing when you're wondering if you just went through a pointless exercise. Spielberg with bad marks on this one. Not recommended.