Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

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 would like to suggest to those who comment on this film, of which there are many, that if one is to judge this movie as 'simplistic' or trite, then one has to answer a set of questions raised by the film - 1. What is the relation between embodiment and desire? Hartley raises this beautifully with the presentation of the girl, and intertwines it with the other themes (among many!) that I would like to point out. 2. What is the role of Christianity in this film? The word become flesh, the girl reading a study bible, the interviewer asking Jack if he is religious, and the idea of sacrifice and martyrdom all raise this issue in interesting and provocative ways. (this is especially interesting considering the film's conclusion and the question it raises about the possibility of a messiah in a capitalist context (i.e. where "value" only means monetary value))3. What is the relation between desire and the structures of society? Does desire resist that power structure, or is it rather created by that power structure? The film raises the question of whether or not the resistance that is possible is also "good for business," and suggests that desire is fully malleable by the power structure. BUT, it also opens the possibility for real resistance, without being overly optimistic about this. There are many many other interesting questions raised by this wonderful and thoughtful film, but these are just a few that immediately strike me as central, and which do not seem to play a role in the criticism of the film voiced by many of its detractors. It is important to develop the skill to enjoy many types of film - important insofar as it simply increases pleasure in watching film - and so it is best to be able to ignore problems with the low production value and bad acting and to enjoy it for its strengths, rather than focus on the negative and not enjoy one's time with the film. P.S. Anyone else wondering about the references to Homer's Odyssey in the film? So many questions . . .

"Simple Men," "Amateur," and "Henry Fool" are among the films of Hal Hartley--one of the wittiest and most sophisticated independent directors working in America today.After seeing "Simple Men," I eagerly waited the release on video of each new Hartley film, and relentlessly hunted down his early work and short films as well. Mostly, I found his movies to be totally and refreshingly offbeat, unpredictable, and irreverent--yet also very watchable--with great plots, likable characters, and a sense of humor that was wry and goofy by turns.His photographic style was crisp and painterly; and though it may it may have looked conventional, its flat lighting and muted colors, coupled with deadpan dialogue and the movement and ear of a good play, it was obvious to anyone that this was genuine "auteur" direction.But Hartley's more recent work—"The Book of Life," "No Such Thing," and now "The Girl from Monday," has failed to stir in me even the slightest interest. There are vestiges in these films of vintage Hartley; but the thrill is definitely gone.As he did in "The Book of Life," Hartley once again decides to offset the horizon in almost every scene—a few degrees to the left, a few degrees to the right—and he indulges in other eccentricities as well, like cutting out frames to make the motion jagged, or moving the camera in and out of focus—in short adding disruption after disruption--all to no purpose that I can discover. Personally, I find nothing interesting and nothing functional in this new, crabbed style of his.The plot of "Girl" is jejune in the extreme—yet another distopic look at a future of totalitarian rule, with a bit of alien intervention to muddy the mix still further. (Someone on this list compared the sci-fi facet to "The Man Who Fell To Earth." Indeed, the theft is so blatant, Roeg should have been mentioned in the credits.) This movie has little to recommend it—even for a Hartley enthusiast like I (was).

So hopefully this was just a blip on the screen of an otherwise good career. Was the talk of the Sundance shuttle bus...but not in a good way.Too many amateurish techniques. Voice over narration in an attempt to get a noir feeling but most of the time was actually for exposition because the story wasn't getting told on the screen.Bad camera technique that would be okay in small doses (ie: a dream sequence) but was tiring and distracting from the opening credits onward. Kept waiting for the "real" movie to start.The girl from Monday doesn't make an appearance for quite awhile in the movie and then gets left in an apartment to learn to use her body (or course she swam out of the ocean quite well).Anyway...I had to leave about the time the boy was getting "raped" in the school bathroom. Time is too precious at Sundance and I went to "Rory O'Shea was Here" and the contrast couldn't have been higher between the two.Is probably a waste of time to anyone but his fans.D.