CIRQUE DU SOLEIL: WORLDS AWAY 3D (2012)

Genre: Fantasy/Adventure
Director: Andrew Adamson
Cast: Matt Gillanders, Jason Berrent, Erica Linz, Igor Zaripov, Dallas Barnett, Lutz Halbhubner, Sophia Elisabeth
RunTime: 1 hr 31 mins
Released By: UIP
Rating: PG
Official Website: http://www.worldsaway3d.com/

Opening Day: 10 January 2013 

Synopsis: From the big top to the big screen, visionary filmmaker James Cameron and director Andrew Adamson (Shrek, Narnia) invite you and your family on an all new 3D adventure: Cirque du Soleil Worlds Away. A young couple who is separated, must journey through the astonishing and dreamlike worlds of Cirque du Soleil to find each other, as audiences experience the immersive 3D technology that will allow them to leap, soar, swim, and dance with the performers. This Holiday Season, Cirque du Soleil brings their world to your city!

Movie Review:

The thing about documentaries, especially documentaries about performing arts, is that at their best times they become transformative experiences. A famous troupe might only stage a few shows – often over a very limited period of time – in the region, and it would cost large sums of money to see the performances, not to mention the effort to plan your schedule around the tricky timings. By bringing these performances to screen, a documentary is not only able to give you a portrait of the troupe you would never otherwise see, but also show you the best parts of their works and talent more spectacular than any single performance might be able to demonstrate. At the low price of one movie ticket, documentaries deliver an easy starting point.

Which is to say that I find them important and incredibly intriguing in general, but specifically when they tackle a troupe as accomplished as Cirque du Soleil. The Canada-based company is the architect behind over a dozen shows, with a good bulk of them attached to permanent runs in theatres across Las Vegas. Such is the genesis of Worlds Away 3D, in which Shrek and Narnia auteur Andrew Adamson points the camera at the stages of various Las Vegas performances, extracts the most unique – and always amazing – set-pieces of each show and weaves them around the charming tale of a girl whose search for a particular aerialist leads her to the dream-like, fantastical alternate dimension of the movie.

Worlds Away 3D is then, when you think about it, straightforwardly crowd-pleasing. One might suspect that Adamson, whose oeuvre hitherto mainly involves him working with characters of mystical origins, finally got his wish fulfilled here. Stripped of a tangled, complicated chronology, and indulging in neither extended digressions nor any sort of exposition or dialogue, Worlds Away 3D is a clean, ravishing presentation on the raw beauty of Cirque du Soleil’s best performances. Above all else, these performances are meticulously designed to exhilarate even the most sceptical of audiences, and Adamson continues to push the envelope in terms of what these performances are able to achieve by piling on the slow-mos, close-ups and underwater cameras.

Yet for each skipped heartbeat and drop of magic that is more keenly felt, Adamson takes a step back with a warm, if slightly distracting and entirely unnecessary romantic story that struggles to connect the movie as he cuts between performances of wildly different themes. A good portion of the blame must be laid at the feet of big screen debutant Erica Linz, who portrays the role of the wide-eyed ingénue with either facile sentimentality or complete confusion. In the hands of a more experienced actress, the simple, well-defined character might have provided a real, relatable human focal point to an otherwise enigmatic world, but here the character is wastefully tried on as a cute costume that adds little to the movie.

This misstep prevents Worlds Away 3D from becoming the perfect entertainment vehicle you can feel is somewhere in there, but when taken as no more than the sum of its stunning set-pieces Worlds Away 3D is shockingly awe-inspiring in its own right. Those who dislike the shows of Cirque du Soleil or performing arts in general might as well stay home. But anyone who loves the international troupe should be thoroughly pleased with this film translation, and anyone who has seen the performances, invited to rewatch them from the refreshing perspectives offered by Adamson’s astute stylistic choices, while anyone who has resisted the call of the troupe all these years should give it a chance. There’s a reason why it has been provoking applause for the last two decades.

Movie Rating:  

(Shockingly awe-inspiring in its own right, this film translation of circus group Cirque du Soleil’s best performances is only let down by a story that fails to add to the stunning set-pieces in any sort of meaningful manner)

Review by Loh Yong Jian