13 Conversations About One Thing

A vry uneven movie, it loses it's own message trying to be artful and clever with the storyline. But still, there are many great moments in the film.

Not as thought-provoking as it aspires to be, but a good watch nonetheless. As is often the case with these multiple-plot movies, all of the stories feel underdeveloped, with the exception of the Alan Arkin thread, which seems to get the most screen time.

Not very memorable, but not extremely bad. Turturro is always nice to watch, and so was Arkin. DuVall wasn't that good, and the artsy farsty music got annoying after a while

Good multicharacter drama. Another movie about real people struggling desperately with real things

Contrived and uninteresting, it offers very little insight into the human condition, instead presenting a number of forced coincidences whose aggregrate message seems to be "life is unpredictable, cyclical, and connected; one day a man is happy, the next day he is sad", the same cliched pronouncements that you can find at the end of most Greek tragedies (and they were kind of hackneyed even then)

It's a thoughtful, absorbing piece, almost guaranteed to make you reflect on your own life, and whether or not you are truly happy. As the film contends, you might be surprised at what you find.

Clever. Grade A story telling. A little slow for a lot of people, though.

Intruiging and well acted

Like some senior project for a philosophy major. Way too landlocked by ideas (and what by the way exactly is that "one thing"?--I still don't see it). Heavy-handed stabs at irony and humor throughout.

It's like a Solondz film, only replacing insight and humor with sad contrivances. Everyone involved puts in decent to great performances, which makes it watchable, just not very good.

"What with all the blanket statements and dime-store ruminations on vanity, the worries of the rich and sudden wisdom, the film becomes a sermon for most of its running time." - Ed Gonzalez

The strength of this film lies in its writing and the performance of Alan Arkin. The visual sensibility is rather ho-hum, on the order of a filmed play. Also, the characters seem disconnected from their contexts--the emphasis on close-ups makes them more like talking heads than living, breathing human beings. However, the writing is strong, if a bit overdone, as characters reflect on the accessibility (or not) of happiness, ending with a poignant, hopeful, and wordless moment.

It's not mindblowing or doesn't offer any deeper insights apart from 'life is random and happiness is relative', but I enjoyed the film as a whole. I enjoyed Alan Arkin in particular. The piano soundtrack gets a bit annoying though.

Great writing and great characters. This isn't much of a plot and it's kinda hard to paste all the connections together with all the time lapses.

Worthwhile for the compelling thread involving Arkin, and a poignant bit of silver-lining gazing by Wise - their story forms the heart of the film and provides the clearest meditations on life philosophies and attitudes; the remaining threads run the gamut from tedious (DuVall) to half-baked (Turturro), leaving you waiting for a galvanising "one thing" that never comes. May have played better as a series of short films, with the intercutting doing nothing but breaking the dramatic spell.