A bizarre mix of documentary, drama and YTV-style animation, What the Bleep Do We Know?! is a dubious excuse for a feature film -- but that's OK, because according to the theories expounded within, it only exists in your mind.

Directors William Arntz, Mark Vicente and Betsy Chasse have assembled a host of talking heads to explain quantum physics and the possibilities it presents with regards to consciousness and self-creation. Interspersed with these are a dramatic plot starring Marlee Matlin as a stressed-out photographer and a variety of animated vignettes that look like something plundered from the vaults of ReBoot.

The heads, while not identified during the film, have some fascinating stuff to say about brain functions and the process of thinking. During the final credits, it's revealed that they're mostly respectable (or at least credible) academic types, ranging from a Stanford professor of Engineering to a Doctor of Anesthesiology at the University of Arizona.

The filmmakers would've been wise to introduce them during the film; as is, there's an air of quackery hanging over the proceedings. It's likely, however, the decision was conscious, intended to conceal the identity of Ramtha, a "great enigma" channelled through a Zsa Zsa Gabor look-alike named JZ Knight (one of the film's more prominent speakers), and apparently an idol of sorts to the filmmakers themselves.

In the end, however, it's a moot point, as the film is completely derailed by its ludicrous fictional components. The Matlin segments, which take her character Amanda to, among other places, a mystical basketball court and a Polish wedding, play like sour-faced Nescafé commercials, and the animated sequences featuring Grimace-like blobs doing Robert Palmer impersonations take things into the realm of impressively bad surrealism, presumably intended to expand your mind but succeeding only in awakening your desire to hit the fast-forward button. If we are what we create, Arntz, Chasse and Vicente need a serious retouching.

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