echostation
Superhero
- Joined
- Apr 29, 2000
- Messages
- 5,093
- Reaction score
- 0
- Points
- 31
http://www.joblo.com/reviews.php?mode=joblo_movies&id=1433
Wow! Where do I begin describing the unmitigated disaster that is Richard Kellys highly anticipated follow-up to his cult hit DONNIE DARKO without turning this into a 10-paragraph rant about how pissed I am that Kelly took his obvious smarts and used it for his own purposes, while thinking very little about a little something called the audience. This film is an incoherent, uninteresting pile of pretentious lines, time-travel and dual personality innuendos, one-dimensional charactersmost of whom I never really understood within the big picture of the movie mixed with science-fiction notions (although the film is only set two years from now, 2008 huh??) and a whole lot of garbage politics, rebel groups, Neo-Marxist factions, the Iraq war, a dumbass porn star who wants to blackmail a $20 million-a-picture movie star and a whole heap of other **** that neither you or I ultimately will care about. Unfortunately for me, I really wanted to like this movie, as I admired what Kelly did with DARKO and Im always up for any flick with ambition, but even I couldnt take it anymore as scene after scene just made no sense and furthermore, continued to propagate the overly complex (or just plain incoherent) plotline filled with way too many characters, ideas, double-personalities and crappy narration (this just made things worse).
I really dont mind when I dont understand where a film is going after its first 20 minutes, or even 40 minutes, but if the 1-hour mark has passed and the movie is just getting more and more complex, and the 1hour and 30 mark hits and still, not much of the movie makes any sense, believe you me when I say that I too wanted to bolt from the theater as many people were doing during my screening. David Lynch earned the right to be ****ed up Kelly jumped into it headfirst with his second picture and it just doesnt work. Slapping midgets into scenes, weird ladies with goofy voices talking **** about something or another (the always-fun Zelda Rubinstein), women asking to suck mens ***** for no reason, or zapping them in the crotch with a taser, well it all just went a little too far and with way too little explanation. But, I believed in Kelly still, and hoped that the films finale would bring it all together, but even then, things never really concretized, and when a 2-hour and 40-minute movie feels like a 4-hour movie (!!), you know youre doing something very, very wrong! Add that to an exhaustive cast housing at least 5 ex-cast members from Saturday Night Live, as well as cameos from peeps like Kevin Smith, Eli Roth and Christophe Lambert, and you just wonder if Kelly was making this as a home-movie for him and his weed buddies, or if he actually thought about it making any sense to anyone in the audience.
I read in an interview that Kelly said that he thought people needed to see his film twice in order to unlock the puzzle, but heres the problem: I dont want to see your **** movie twice, dude it sucks!! Furthermore, it was hard enough getting through the first screening because the characters were all dumbasses, the plot incoherent, the scenes jumbled and many a line, pretentious. The only way to save this movie, in my opinion, is to either sell it as a bomb (See the movie that everyone said sucks the big one!!) or cut about an hour from it, remove the stupid narration stuff and a slew of extraneous characters, and start the movie off with a little title intro, explaining a little of what the **** is happening in the movie. I watched it all and I still dont even know what the rest of the world was like, if places like NY still existed or where the F the President was the whole time. Very badly constructed. But blaming only Kelly is too simplistic. The man, at the very least, has to be respected for attempting something out there and different, but the producers, the collaborators, the people who put money into a movie expecting it to either entertain or inform an audience so that they can make some money back what the hell were they thinking??? Didnt they read this incoherent script or check the dailies?
And if you think youre as intelligent or deep as Kelly as to understand this movie, more power to you and yours, my friend, because I love unraveling **** and I wanted to saw my nuts off about halfway through this picture. The film does however get 3 points from me for 1) its awesome soundtrack 2) its fun actors for the most part and 3) its ambition. The films score and songs were really awesome, no matter how bad the film. I especially enjoyed the scene in which Timberlakes character sang I Got Soul, which is ironic since thats one of the sequences that can easily be excised from the movie without losing anything from its over-plotted storyline. Despite his one-dimensionality, The Rock was also great as the lead, as was Timberlake (although his character could actually be cut altogether), and Mandy Moore but mostly because she looked ultra-hot and was *****y at the same time. Turned me on. Finally, I dig and respect the ambition of this movie, but honestly, it doesnt even come together in any miniscule way and ultimately just pissed me off more than anything. People who hate each other suddenly making out with each other. The end of the world leading Sarah Michelle Gellars character to dance all of a sudden, or a small babys constipation apparently leading to a fart that would blow up the world. None of it made much sense at the time, and even less sense now that I think about it.
In fact, if any of you have seen BACK TO THE FUTURE 2, you can basically take that movie, double the confusion, add a bunch of pretension, quadruple the number of characters and imagine it being about three times as long, and youll get a roundabout idea of what SOUTHLAND TALES is all about. Which incidentally, is not a musical, as per some earlier rumors. That said, if the film was supposed to be a satire, I mustve missed out on any of the actual comedy as well. In the end though, I really do hope that Kelly can save it, but I really doubt it, as its greatest key to comprehension is likely to be the ingestion of a whole bunch of weed before your viewing, and Im pretty sure the studio wont want to market it that way. Then again ? Note: Rent STRANGE DAYS instead a much, much better version of a similar topic that actually works as a film, is not simplistic by any means and makes sense to boot!
Wow! Where do I begin describing the unmitigated disaster that is Richard Kellys highly anticipated follow-up to his cult hit DONNIE DARKO without turning this into a 10-paragraph rant about how pissed I am that Kelly took his obvious smarts and used it for his own purposes, while thinking very little about a little something called the audience. This film is an incoherent, uninteresting pile of pretentious lines, time-travel and dual personality innuendos, one-dimensional charactersmost of whom I never really understood within the big picture of the movie mixed with science-fiction notions (although the film is only set two years from now, 2008 huh??) and a whole lot of garbage politics, rebel groups, Neo-Marxist factions, the Iraq war, a dumbass porn star who wants to blackmail a $20 million-a-picture movie star and a whole heap of other **** that neither you or I ultimately will care about. Unfortunately for me, I really wanted to like this movie, as I admired what Kelly did with DARKO and Im always up for any flick with ambition, but even I couldnt take it anymore as scene after scene just made no sense and furthermore, continued to propagate the overly complex (or just plain incoherent) plotline filled with way too many characters, ideas, double-personalities and crappy narration (this just made things worse).
I really dont mind when I dont understand where a film is going after its first 20 minutes, or even 40 minutes, but if the 1-hour mark has passed and the movie is just getting more and more complex, and the 1hour and 30 mark hits and still, not much of the movie makes any sense, believe you me when I say that I too wanted to bolt from the theater as many people were doing during my screening. David Lynch earned the right to be ****ed up Kelly jumped into it headfirst with his second picture and it just doesnt work. Slapping midgets into scenes, weird ladies with goofy voices talking **** about something or another (the always-fun Zelda Rubinstein), women asking to suck mens ***** for no reason, or zapping them in the crotch with a taser, well it all just went a little too far and with way too little explanation. But, I believed in Kelly still, and hoped that the films finale would bring it all together, but even then, things never really concretized, and when a 2-hour and 40-minute movie feels like a 4-hour movie (!!), you know youre doing something very, very wrong! Add that to an exhaustive cast housing at least 5 ex-cast members from Saturday Night Live, as well as cameos from peeps like Kevin Smith, Eli Roth and Christophe Lambert, and you just wonder if Kelly was making this as a home-movie for him and his weed buddies, or if he actually thought about it making any sense to anyone in the audience.
I read in an interview that Kelly said that he thought people needed to see his film twice in order to unlock the puzzle, but heres the problem: I dont want to see your **** movie twice, dude it sucks!! Furthermore, it was hard enough getting through the first screening because the characters were all dumbasses, the plot incoherent, the scenes jumbled and many a line, pretentious. The only way to save this movie, in my opinion, is to either sell it as a bomb (See the movie that everyone said sucks the big one!!) or cut about an hour from it, remove the stupid narration stuff and a slew of extraneous characters, and start the movie off with a little title intro, explaining a little of what the **** is happening in the movie. I watched it all and I still dont even know what the rest of the world was like, if places like NY still existed or where the F the President was the whole time. Very badly constructed. But blaming only Kelly is too simplistic. The man, at the very least, has to be respected for attempting something out there and different, but the producers, the collaborators, the people who put money into a movie expecting it to either entertain or inform an audience so that they can make some money back what the hell were they thinking??? Didnt they read this incoherent script or check the dailies?
And if you think youre as intelligent or deep as Kelly as to understand this movie, more power to you and yours, my friend, because I love unraveling **** and I wanted to saw my nuts off about halfway through this picture. The film does however get 3 points from me for 1) its awesome soundtrack 2) its fun actors for the most part and 3) its ambition. The films score and songs were really awesome, no matter how bad the film. I especially enjoyed the scene in which Timberlakes character sang I Got Soul, which is ironic since thats one of the sequences that can easily be excised from the movie without losing anything from its over-plotted storyline. Despite his one-dimensionality, The Rock was also great as the lead, as was Timberlake (although his character could actually be cut altogether), and Mandy Moore but mostly because she looked ultra-hot and was *****y at the same time. Turned me on. Finally, I dig and respect the ambition of this movie, but honestly, it doesnt even come together in any miniscule way and ultimately just pissed me off more than anything. People who hate each other suddenly making out with each other. The end of the world leading Sarah Michelle Gellars character to dance all of a sudden, or a small babys constipation apparently leading to a fart that would blow up the world. None of it made much sense at the time, and even less sense now that I think about it.
In fact, if any of you have seen BACK TO THE FUTURE 2, you can basically take that movie, double the confusion, add a bunch of pretension, quadruple the number of characters and imagine it being about three times as long, and youll get a roundabout idea of what SOUTHLAND TALES is all about. Which incidentally, is not a musical, as per some earlier rumors. That said, if the film was supposed to be a satire, I mustve missed out on any of the actual comedy as well. In the end though, I really do hope that Kelly can save it, but I really doubt it, as its greatest key to comprehension is likely to be the ingestion of a whole bunch of weed before your viewing, and Im pretty sure the studio wont want to market it that way. Then again ? Note: Rent STRANGE DAYS instead a much, much better version of a similar topic that actually works as a film, is not simplistic by any means and makes sense to boot!
