WARNING: This post contains very mild spoilers for Cirque Du Soleil: Worlds Away, though there really isn’t much to spoil.

Thank goodness for free movie vouchers.  I would not have been all too happy if I spent actual money on the ticket for this.  Against my better judgment I went to see this, and let me tell you after having seen it, I will now state the obvious.  This movie is absolutely not a decent replacement for seeing Cirque Du Soleil live, and I consider that a high compliment for the troupe.  They are a performance meant to be seen live, and worth every penny of their ticket price, however steep it may feel to some.

However, I will say that if you are unsure about shelling out the money for a full price ticket to one of their shows, then you might want to check this out and just go in considering it as a teaser.  It will definitely whet your appetite and make you want to go grab the live experience.

If you’re going hoping that there’s going to be some sort of storyline, I will tell you right now that there practically is none.  There also isn’t any talking except for maybe like one line from the leading lady, and it’s not even a very long line at that—just a single word, “help!”  The story is mostly just a woman wandering into a circus, having a sort of “love at first sight” type of thing happen with a trapeze artist, and then they both fall into some kind of alternate dimension where she’s busy trying to find him again.

The beginning I found to be kind of slow, but it picks up after about fifteen minutes.  As short as the movie is in actuality, there are some parts where it sort of seems to drag.  There are a few pretty neat scenes though, and it’s also kind of cool to see a lot of the acts in slow motion and up close, which are both probably things that wouldn’t be part of a normal live experience.  In that regard, you could consider this as sort of a “behind-the-scenes” extra of their performance footage.

The 3D is also not as impressive as one would hope, especially for the movie ticket price for a 3D showing.  Nothing really pops out in Real-D 3D.  Perhaps things might pop up more in IMAX, but I highly doubt it.  So if you’ve heard that James Cameron helped with the 3D effects for the movie and are hoping for something like Avatar (2009) while you wait for the sequel to come out, you’re going to be in for a world of disappointment.

(…just realized that last sentence could be taken for as a pun.  I assure you, that was not intended.)

Anyway, the rating below is in no way reflective of Cirque Du Soleil’s performance.  They were phenomenal.  This rating is just in terms of how watchable this is as a movie.  And honestly, I didn’t really think it was.  It wasn’t so awful that I wanted to walk out of it, but it just didn’t draw me in the way I was hoping it would, at the very least because of the 3D effects.

FINAL RATING: C-

Wait for the stream, or feel free to skip this altogether and just go to a live performance of Cirque Du Soleil.  The latter option, in my opinion, is far more worth it.