“Self/less,” if you couldn’t tell from the preposterous title, is a deeply silly movie that takes itself very, very seriously.
The premise is interesting enough: A dying man (Ben Kingsley) undergoes a procedure to save his mind by ditching his failing body for a shiny new model (Ryan Reynolds, you could do worse). But, the lofty ambitions, trite messages, half-hearted allegories and over-the-top caricatures make director Tarsem Singh’s (“The Cell,” “The Fall”) latest a misguidedly campy experience.
Here, the dying man, Damian (Kingsley), is possibly the worst person in the world, a selfish, egotistical man.
“Self/less” imagines itself as a high-concept redemption tale. But in execution, it’s more concerned with the action. The movie assumes the audience will develop some empathy for Damian along the way, never wondering why we’d root for this awful billionaire — even in Reynolds’ body.
