First off... Great shout out to the before trilogy. Huge fan.

But... I disagree on magnolia. I see the failures in character development rippling into into other areas of the film, causing even more problems.

The whole film relies heavily on melodrama to stir emotions since the character development is so light. You don't care about the characters or outcomes, so bring up the heavy/emotional score and the quick edits between emotional highs and lows.

I used to argue with my film school roommate about this film all the time in the early aughts. It's all style and very little substance. And I feel like calling it "style" is even a stretch.

To me, it feels like a film school project from someone with borderline personality disorder and delusions of film making grandure. Or a word salad with a big vocabulary... Impressively meaningless.