Sight is a well-intentioned movie saddled with some bad writing, iffy acting, and, above all, too many plots that made me groan every time they switched between them.

It’s the true story of a Chinese immigrant eye surgeon who develops a process to cure the vision of some of his patients. It’s also the flashback story of his challenges growing up in China and moving to the United States for a better education.

When it’s about saving the eyesight of little girls and other patients, it’s a pretty decent film. It gives us his struggles and frustrations as some of his ideas fail, it follows him on first dates, and is generally a pretty well-told film with solid acting. If it has any problems, it comes from ham-handed late-stage faith-based twist that wasn’t set up and helped resolve an ego problem that came out of nowhere too.

But the real problem comes from continuous flashbacks to his life in China (complete with an uncomfortable orientalist soundtrack). He lived through a moment of revolutionaries trying to take down ancient Chinese history, art, music, and science. And this COULD have – and should have – been a good story on its own, but crammed into this film’s main plot, it winds up being repetitive and tiresome. I rolled my eyes every time it flashed back.

This film tries too hard to be too many things. A film about a man’s struggle for an education in China is interesting. A film about a guy moving to the US for higher education and the resulting culture shock would also be interesting. A film about a genius eye surgeon saving lives would also be an interesting film. But cramming them all into one bloated film… not interesting. Very tedious and tiresome.

Score: 68