Allison Shoemaker

Dull at best, damaging at worst, and not worth a moment of your time.

Give or take one excellent joke about the practical applications of handcuffs — delivered with expert awkwardness by Dakota Johnson, who remains the only moderately charming element of the trilogy — the film is as devoid of wit as it is of subtlety, and that combined absence, courtesy of screenwriter Niall Leonard, leads to some of its biggest unintentional laughs.

Ghost in the Shell is a visually arresting film, even occasionally an entertaining one, but profound it ain’t. That’s no crime, but dressed up as it is in the trappings of a much smarter film, its significant shortcomings stand out every bit as much as a pair of pert breasts on a supposedly utilitarian body.

What we really get is a film made of utter nonsense that’s even less interested in its characters than it is in telling a story.

In attempting to tell the story of this young woman’s death — not her life, no time for that either — I Still Believe cheapens it.

Together, Weaver and Keaton sometimes manage to tease out the movie inside the movie, the one drawn to the connections between death and joy, youthfulness and mortality.

The film has spent so much time telegraphing its own depth that it forgets to create any, and thus when that wig arrives, we have no reason to view it as anything other than ridiculous.

Blakeson and screenwriters Susannah Grant, Akiva Goldsman, and Jeff Pinkner don’t seem to care much about telling the story. They’re just checking off the boxes.