The film has two directors who co-wrote it with a third collaborator, all of them basically unknowns.

"What the Bleep" is something of a New Age-y riff on Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time," the treatise reconciling science and traditional religion.

Here, quantum physics is paired with spirituality. That makes for the oddly interesting theory of self-empowerment through proton proliferation. Or something like that. Or perhaps not like that at all.

Lots of formidable academic credentials butt talking heads with such novelties as J.Z. Knight, the modern woman who channels the 35,000-year-old philosopher Ramtha. How's that for diversity?

For the structural backbone, the film follows Amanda (Marlee Matlin), a wedding photographer in Portland, Ore., who's relatively overcome by negativity.

"What happens within us will create what happens outside of us," a narrator intones, opening the door to meditations on particle physics, time travel, the power of positive thinking and much, much, much, much more.

From there, we go down "the rabbit hole of mysteriousness" and burrow straight into some nuttiness.

Much is persuasive and seems to make sense about what's shown, but that's ultimately more about effective storytelling than it is about explaining the unexplainable.

The bottom line is it's one unusual time at the movies that at least lends viewers the idea they've just audited a college class and come away much the wiser.

The real question many viewers will ask about "What the Bleep Do We Know?" is, "What the heck are we to make of all this?"

jeff.farance@news-jrnl.com

"WHAT THE BLEEP

DO WE KNOW?"

NOT RATED

** 1/2 108 minutes

CAST: Marlee Matlin.

CONTENT: Some obscenity and sexual content.

SHOWING AT: Act One Theatre of Daytona (formerly N&S Cinemas)