Occasionally recalling a physics lesson, an acid trip, and a lost afternoon at a New Age bookstore, What The BLEEP Do We Know?! asks nothing but big questions, beginning with its title. Part narrative drama, part documentary, all hippie mindfuck, the film utilizes computer animation, surreal vignettes, goofy humor, and an avalanche of overeducated talking heads discoursing on weighty issues in an attempt to convey the mystery and wonder of quantum physics. What is quantum physics? Dictionary.com dryly defines the term as "the branch of physics based on quantum theory," but What The BLEEP suggests that it can more colorfully be described as a bunch of freaky-ass shit about so-called "reality" that'll blow people's minds once they find out about it.
Marlee Matlin stars in the narrative part of What The BLEEP as an anxious, troubled photographer whose life and anxieties reflect and dramatize the film's scientific, philosophical, and metaphysical concerns. Following in the time-honored tradition of stoned philosophy undergraduates the world over, the film asks spacey questions about the nature of reality and perception. What is reality? What is perception? Is there such a thing as objective reality? The filmmakers never profess to provide answers. Instead, they bombard their audience with so much information—of varying degrees of legitimacy and lucidity—that the vast majority of What The BLEEP 's ideas simply ricochet around frenetically before disappearing into the ether, victims of chronic oversaturation.
Jazzed by its own deep thoughts, What The BLEEP darts around maniacally before congealing around a touchy-feely message of personal empowerment whose secular humanism and moral relativism is bound to strike fundamentalists of all stripes as downright Satanic. "What the fuck do we know?!," the film asks. Just enough, it suggests, to begin to fathom how little we understand. But viewers' willingness to follow that rambling train of thought will depend heavily on their tolerance for painful earnestness, New Age hooey, and fuzzy mysticism.