Magnolia starts out brilliantly and then pretty much runs off the tracks at about the 1 hour 45 minute mark.
I was absolutely blown away by the first 2/3 of the film. The pacing was quick, the multiple narrative threads were all being kept nice and tight and engaging, the characters were interesting, it was fun trying to figure out who everyone was and how they were connected, the ambitious scope of the film was impressive... and then it climaxes prematurely (a pain I know all too well) and craps out out a musical interlude like a cat giving birth to a wormy mullion. From that point on the movie is dragged down by rambling monologues, frogs start falling from the sky and any kind of resolution is forfeited in the interest of, I don't know, cultivating some kind of arthouse chic?
Anyway, the reasons this movie dropped from 5 stars to 3.5:
1. This is the kind of film that undergraduate film students salivate over. It's relatively accessible, there are a lot of big name stars whose mediocre performances are veiled by their celebrity, and there are a ton of rambling and arguably pointless and inconclusive ideas that get jumbled around. I'm sure that someone or many someones have written their thesis on the symbolism of rain in this film. But come on... that kind of trite film school symbolism smacks of intellectual laziness. The director says "Hey, this will be cool, let's drop a bunch of frogs out of the sky" and then retroactively inserts Biblical allusions in certain scenes? Not that deep...
2. It's OK to climax in Act 3 or 4. There's no shame in it. But if you go that route, you'd better have enough momentum to get to the finish line. This film is basically over after the Game Show sequence. That's it. All the fuel is used up and it suddenly becomes self indulgent, drawn out, the otherwise stellar Jason Robards goes into a tailspin of a monologue, and nothing happens except for a hail of frogs. I'll admit, about an hour into the film I started to worry. I wondered if Anderson had bitten off more than he could chew. He had successfully built up an exciting and interesting mini-universe populated with well rendered characters who were all orbiting each other in a narrative that was very novel-like in its complexity... but where was it all going? Turns out, he didn't really know. And it shows.
3. There's no satisfying resolution for anyone. Not a single character. Except the ones that die. But in life there are no resolutions, right? One man lives, another man dies. Someone loves, someone hates. The cycle continues. OK. Great. That works sometimes, in some movies. But not in this one. It especially feels like a cop-out because all the threads are left dangling. So, like, what was the point? Oh shit! Maybe that was the point. There was no point! I'd better e-mail my thesis advisor immediately.
4. Acting was mediocre. Tom Cruise has moments where he's on the money, especially toward the end. The kid was great, but he just fades out at the end. Jason Robards was superb. The best talent in the film, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, was under-used as the simple faggy wet nurse and the usually great William H. Macy was off his game. John C. Reilly's not even worth mentioning and Julianne Moore... she's playing the same character as in Boogie Nights. She goes all out, no doubt about it, but how hard do you think it really is to play a hysterical person? I don't think it's that hard.
5. What was the point of that dead body in the lady's apartment? I'm all for MacGuffins.... sometimes... but what the hell? And the rapping kid? And the mysterious trenchcoat man? If you're gonna cut a subplot, cut it all out. Don't leave flashes of it in to fluff up the narrative, especially when the film is already clocking in at over 3 hours.
I'm being harsh with this film because it had a lot of potential and wasted it. That is sometimes worse than having a shitty film that meets expectations.
Julianna Moore 
