The Double

      As I watched The Double,  stylistic and visual tidbits from other dystopian films hopscotched somewhere between synapses:   the famous sign outside a suburban house in A Clockwork Orange that reads 'Home',  the ominous televisions in Farenheit 451 and David Lynch's artfully creepy use of closeups.   There's also a screaming crib from Rear Window.   The references pile up and very soon you realize you're cataloguing and not watching.  

      That's unfortunate because the film delivers two very good performances by Jesse Eisenberg in the title role and some beautifully realized,  steampunk-like interiors. The Double is visually rich and full of nightmarish DOS-style computers with blank keyboards, clanging elevators, dingy apartments and gloomy lighting.    The stumbling block is the script, based on a novella by Dostoevsky about doppelgangers,  that marches  blithely off into Kafka land.  Woody Allen, Steven Soderbergh and Orson Welles have trod here before with only Welles turning in a film that might be labelled successful. Richard Ayoade adds zip in the way of fresh  insight or any particular suspense to the material,  The Double clumps along, an earnest, albeit professionally produced, amateur screenplay.