Don't Believe the Hype

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

The best thing about this film is trying to remember what else you've seen the actors in. Pitch Perfect. Master and Commander. Best of all, the King of France in the fantastic Versailles series. As for the plot and much of the acting. Shocking. Self indulgent. Up its own backside. In the third 'iteration' of the purposes of the students thought experiment - to survive s nuclear war and repopulate the planet - the whimpering, whining, very annoying heroine, choose all the artistic types to be in her bunker. Sure they have a fun year, playing cards and singing, but when they get out, completely lacking in practical skills, they die. And the human race dies with them. Doh! If the point of the writer is to show that emotion and feeling are 'better' than rationale, then a) that may be true in certain situations b) it's not true when you let all the useful people die and you are are left trying to survive, with a poet, opera singer, harpist and ice cream maker. What a waste of time. How did this idiot writer and director get funding?

This film fails mainly due to it's convoluted idea of what philosophy is. Much like God's Not Dead, the film twists the basic concepts of philosophy to fulfill its own purposes and completely avoids any real attempt at philosophical reasoning or examination. In this case, the supposedly high-honors philosophy class focuses almost entirely on logic problems and fanciful what-if scenarios that have more to do with probability and micro-managing than anything else. Not only does the majority of the lesson totally ignore spirituality, existentialism, and morality, but when they do pop up they are treated as if they are enemies of philosophical thought because the defy cold reasoning and logic in some way. Then there's the professor, who intentionally cheats and manipulates the "mind games" just to agitate the boyfriend of one of the students he slept with, which would have been an interesting twist if it actually ended up having any real impact on the topics at hand. The fact alone that an advanced philosophy class would discuss a scenario involving perpetuation of the human species after a cataclysmic event without even debating the need to do so sets this film far below the intellectual level it so desperately wants to display. It's a good thing that they changed the title from The Philosophers, as that would have been a worst case example of false advertising. Or to sum up: there's nothing worse than a film that thinks it's smarter than it is.

I hardly ever write reviews unless a movie is incredible or pure trash. This movie is pure trash. I am still in disbelief at how bad this movie is.1. The lead actress in the movie is so bad. Its so bad that all of her lines are almost straight monotone. 2. Their "logic" is anything but logical. It would be like having a thought experiment and in the middle someone say "i went into this room and there was a time machine and everyone lived happily ever after"...Its like there was no rules. You could make up whatever you would like. I was going to keep going with this but i just realized i have wasted too much time on this movie. I recommend skipping this horrible waste of time.

just watched this film. saw a lot of derision on here for it so had to comment. this film asks some really good questions and doesn't ask a lot of other questions. This film lets the viewer think. A quality that so few films allow these days. Yes, there is a formula to this film but that is not a bad thing. The themes this film allows you to think about need a familiar plot point to ground it so we as an audience can relate. Sure this film is not Oscar worthy if that matters, but that doesn't make it a bad movie. This film reminds me of the 'Lifeboat' exercise I did in drama school. The 3rd solution to the puzzle made so much sense to me. Watch it and make up your own mind.