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It's one of those films that everyone thought could have been great, "except that..." It followed the same story structure as "Boogie Nights", except that it put in more overly dramatic parts.
Personally, I liked the frogs. However, as far as I can tell, Paul Thomas Anderson (one of my favorite new directors, by the way) just seemed to have written several good stories and characters, and then tried to connect them all in some manner other than the typical revelation end scene. So he made a film about odd coincidences and parallels, and added all the bizarre touches (the intro narration, the singing, the frogs, everyone crying at the same time) to try to drive in his point better. He then worked in his typical points: rise & fall & half-rise, prodigal sons, artificial/surrogate families replacing estranged families, the pardoning of sins & return to the right path, people mistreated by their labels, and etc.
However, he didn't tie up many of his threads, and some conclusions left me unsatisfied. Not to mention that I felt that every character still needed to be developed more - there were too many and they all stole time from each other.
And there's more I could talk about this film...
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