Some wonderful actors, a handful of great moments, but nowhere near as brilliant as it would like to be (or thinks it is). It's difficult to dismiss entirely, because there are some genuinely talented people at work here -- William H. Macy, for instance, could read binary code and make it interesting. But before a frame of film was shot, somebody should have made P.T. Anderson understand that his script was nearly twice as long as the material merited. High school sophomores will no doubt be dazzled by the obvious symbolism and superficial "complexity" of the characters; the rest of us will recognize "Magnolia" as a largely self-indulgent misfire.
