“In Cloud Atlas, the Wachowskis wildly overreached while tackling the notion of reincarnation via a daring, genre-spanning nonlinear narrative that challenged the very limits of conventional storytelling. Now, with Jupiter Ascending, the subject arises once again, albeit in the most banal, been-there-done-that way imaginable: as a garish, Phantom Menace-esque space opera in which a lowly Russian cleaning lady (Mila Kunis) is born with DNA identical to that of the most powerful woman in the universe. The movie refers to this statistical improbability as a ‘recurrence,’ which could also describe the painfully familiar feeling we get from watching the Wachowskis fail once again, this time on an unrecoverable $175 million budget. After this debacle, it will be a long time before the kind of recurrence where anyone trusts the duo with a budget anywhere near this scale again.” — from Peter Debruge‘s 2.2 Variety review.

The “absolutely bananas” quote is from Alonso Duralde‘s Wrap review, which also calls Jupiter Ascending “the most expensive movie Roger Corman never made.”