EEAAO is likely to be the most overhyped movie I've encountered in a lifetime of watching movies. That this overlong, over imaginative, over indulgent, pastiche of a film managed to inveigle the Academy of Motion Picture Science into awarding it 7, yes 7, of the major Oscars is just beyond my comprehension.

Everyone (pun intended) seems to want to do multi - verse/ multi - dimensional films these days. Fine! But at least attempt to make them coherent enough to tell a story. The various Star Trek franchises have been doing this generally successfully for many years. The Matrix quadrilogy began with some genuinely original ideas on the concept, then later overcooked them. Marvel hopped on the bandwagon and don't look like jumping off for quite awhile. But at least the aforementioned generally had some sort of reasonably clear narrative, with which to tag along.

EEAAO has none of these attributes. Its multiverses exist as a means to an end, which believe you me, at 139 minutes is a very long time coming and indeed seemed much longer to this disappointed punter. The whole film seems like one great cinematic contradiction. It does have frenetic pace, but no suspense. It's marketed as a comedy. Yet, I found it best, as amusing in parts. It's full of dialogue, which is constantly repetitive and lacks any form of wit or cleverness. There are plenty of martial arts scenes which look almost deliberately over - choreographed, unrealistic and illusory. It does have a predictably (surprisingly brief in the context of the whole film) happy ending. It's just that it's irritatingly baffling, how we all get to it.

I've been a huge Michelle Yeo fan for many, many years. But to think that her albeit, zany, quirky, performance here, was considered superior to that of Cate Blanchett, who delivers one of the GREAT cinematic performances in Tar. Well to say I'm flabbergasted, is very much an understatement. Similarly, whilst Jamie Lee Curtis is a much admired actress, all she really does here is wear drab clothes, various wigs, prosthetics and shout a lot. This is deserving of an Oscar? Go figure.

EEAAO is a mediocre fantasy film with little grounding in actual reality. (Don't even get me started on bagels.) Its greatest attributes as far as I can see are that it looks, production wise, to be a bigger budgeted movie than it really is and its quick fire editing serves to disguise, one can only assume, its numerous deficiencies from its host of fawning admirers.