1. Shot piecemeal over the course of four years on locations in 18 countries, The Fall is a genuine labor of love -- and a real bore.
2. This whacked-out fairy tale for grown-ups is as stunning in its beauty as it is in its lack of logic.
3. Some of the set pieces are ravishing, more often they're ravishingly clunky.
4. For a film that wants to present itself as extravagantly dazzling, there is something thuddingly familiar and bland in its vision.
5. This is a feast for the eyes and a famine for the brain.
6. [Tarsem] Singh's visual sense is stunning, but he's also attuned to the darker corners of children's imaginations.
7. The Fall is aptly named not only because it pertains to a tragic descent but because viewers will feel as if they have plunged headlong into an alternate universe with this dazzling adult fairy tale.
8. Each and every of Tarsem's visuals scratch onerously at the mind, heart, and cornea.
9. A paean to the art of storytelling as it existed before mass-produced visual media replaced the spoken word as the primary creative medium.
10. The scope of Tarsem's imagination and vision and the delightful pairing of Pace and Untaru creates an eclectic fantasy tale unlike anything we've since The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.
Based on these individual reviews, what is the critic consensus?
More visually elaborate than the fragmented story can sometimes support, The Fall walks the line between labor of love and filmmaker self-indulgence.