The film is a metaphor for "the rat race." Get it? That's why the rat imagery appears throughout the film. All over the film. The film is a rant against the rat race. The lesson, therefore, is the more obvious "hey, we need to stop and 'smell the roses.'" I found the film enjoyable, and I accepted the recurring scenes as they were intended: without them, you'd have no film. So I simply didn't let the repetition get to me. I looked for inconsistencies in the images as I watched them again and again; that is, I looked for changes during the recurring events. (No, I didn't see any.) But, again, the rat race metaphor is really very clever, and I didn't understand the rat metaphor (assuming I'm correct) until the film started its second cycle. I did not find the "product placements" to be intrusive -- which I'm sure is what the film makers intended.
