I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Hal Hartley has always been an inconsistent filmmaker. He made the terrific Trust and a lot of good movies like Henry Fool and The Unbelievable Truth, but he has also made a frightening number of movies that are really, really, bad.After the excellent Henry Fool, Hartley reached a sort of consistency, pumping out consistently terrible movies one after the other like Fay Grimm, No Such Thing, Book of Life, and the abysmal Girl from Monday.Girl from Monday is a few different sorts of bad. It is a trite sci-fi story of the sort written by people who haven't read enough science fiction to know that their ideas are unoriginal. It is convoluted storytelling poorly held together by an inescapable voice-over in lieu of using action to tell story. It is filmed in a purposefully artsy style involving odd angles and breaks in action that does nothing to further the story and fails to create an interesting style.Hartley is always at his best exploring the lives of odd people who can't communicate. But this movie has little of that classic Hartley approach to conversation outside of a short chat early on between the two leads. Mainly it's either narration or two characters exchanging information in a straightforward but uninteresting way.Like No Such Thing and Fay Grimm, this is a genre movie from a director who is incapable of making genre movies. It is admirable that Hartley likes to try new things, but it's remarkable how bad he is when he gets out of his groove.By the way, some people have suggested this is Hartley being Goddard. I absolutely hate Goddard. Just so you know where I'm coming from.

The dialogue is stilted, the acting is just awful, the back story is sketchy---especially frustrating in a film that hangs on its back story---and the "futuristic" props are so cheap as to be comical. The social-scientific concept of the movie sounds rather intriguing when read in summary on Wikipedia, but it's not fleshed out in the film. Worse yet, there's no connection established between that concept and the extra-terrestrial aspects of the story. Overall, this movie lacks a coherent plot, on top of stunningly poor execution. Indeed, the best thing about this film is the titles design. So watch those and move on---don't waste the next 80 minutes of your life.

I admire the delicious political cynicism of this film, but it's too bad a lot of 'art-house' critics inject profundity into films where no such profundity exists. It always reminds me of James Joyce's remark after reading a particularly pontificating, over-analyzed-and-intellectualized critique of Ulysses: 'Sounds good to me; wish I'd thought of that'. (I'm paraphrasing).Whoever said this is a 'Hartley film' is probably closest to the truth. You either 'get' the guy or you don't. Personally, I'm in the latter camp. I keep watching Hartley's films and he doesn't make me swoon (regrettably, because I hate Hollywood crap and want indie makers to succeed).In 'The Girl From Monday,' I was confused from the get-go. The voice-over and 'establishment' shots just didn't place me at all. The acting was sub-par. If you're going to throw satiric barbs at a juicy target like capitalism, you'd better have actors with more conviction and irony in their voices. I wanted this film to register with me, but it didn't.

It has a promising plot line, and some quite interesting performances and direction, but overall I felt the film lacked substance. Except for its unique idea of sex-for-points, it's filled with simple notions such as "advertising is bad" and "freedom is good." Both are valid beliefs, but neither are explored with much originality.It played out like a weak version of an excellent novel or short story. Great soundtrack, though.(BTW, I believe the opening credits read "A Science Fiction by Hal Hartley," not "A Science Fiction Film by Hal Hartley," as the first reviewer wrote. Not sure exactly what he means by that, but it is probably significant to Hartley.)