magnolia’s disappointment

I’m talking about Magnolia, the movie filmed in 1999 with exceptional actors & actresses, including Tom Cruise, Julianna Moore, and William Macy, among others.

I decided to watch this movie because I really liked the movie Babel, and it was listed as a similar film and put in the same category as Traffic, Syriana, Crash, Amores Perros…all great movies with one thing in common: they’re all like 5 stories in one, where you have to wait til the end to see how the different stories are related to one another.
First of all, the movie was almost 3 hours long. I kept on watching because I thought there would be some conclusion that would bring all the stories together in a neat way. And since the acting was so good, I thought the plot would be too. I was dead wrong. The serious, dramatic, and ‘real’ life stories were abruptly ruined by the stupidest addition to the plot: frogs falling down from the sky. I couldn’t believe it. Great acting and serious drama with the recurring ‘it’s not a coincidence’ theme and then raining frogs??? What the hell? I could have dealt with the synchronous singing along to that weird song, but the frogs really killed my ’suspension of belief.’
On top of that, the movie had started out with three strange historical ‘coincidence’ stories which they claimed were not coincidence. Interesting, but then they went to the regular part of the movie and NEVER WENT BACK TO EXPLAIN why or what those other stories were about. Okay, they did mention them once at the end, but without any real tying-together or conclusion or ANYTHING. (as a side note: the entire movie, especially the first ‘coincidence’ stories were filled with the intriguing number 82, which kept popping up everywhere imaginable. This also was never explained. Was that an inside joke of the production crew?)

Also, one side story of the dead white guy in the closet along with the rapping kid talking about “The Worm” was never explained either. If they did tie that one in somehow, I guess I missed it. Oh well.

All I can tell you is this: don’t waste your 3 hours. You will be sorely disappointed, as was I. I cannot believe I had found good reviews of the movie. To me, the movie was a slap in the face to all the great acting in it, a waste for all the hard work. Why they couldn’t find a meaningful closure to the movie (oh yeah, why the hell was it named “Magnolia”???), I do not know.

Update: It seems most my questions are answered here. The number 82 refers to a chapter in the bible, etc, etc, etc. No wonder I missed that… But even with the explanations, I still can’t say I liked the movie!