Southland Tales (2006, USA)

Watching Southland Tales is something like reading a Philip K. Dick story, except without most of the humor and thoughtfulness. Sure, there are plenty of ideas in Richard Kelly's sophomore film - too many of them, in fact - but they're either quite broad or way too obscure. There's nothing really to sink your teeth into, as each idea has its brief moment before the movie skips along to the next one. As for the humor, I think I may have actually smiled once or twice, but most of the jokes fall flat - the overwhelming feeling while watching this movie is something akin to, "what the FUCK?" At one point I thought - "Well, all this movie is really missing is a musical number or two." I found myself eerily rewarded about twenty minutes later.

I think Southland Tales fails as a political satire because it's played too broadly, while simultaneously failing as a science fiction manifesto due to its complete and utter lack of a unifying concept. Kelly messes around with the space-time continuum yet again, as he did in Donnie Darko, while simultaneously playing with America's energy crisis, the war(s) in the Middle East, killer L.A. cops, the cult of celebrity, neoconservatives, and teen horniness. And in the world Kelly has created, few of these ideas know how to get along with one another very well.

Another thing I found completely bewildering was Kelly's intertwining homage to Kiss Me Deadly and Mulholland Drive (the latter of which already makes many references to the former). You can see the two films popping up everywhere, but to what end? It's all surface and little or no substance. (Hey, why not invite Rebekah Del Rio to sing the national anthem FOR NO APPARENT REASON. Why not have a midget carrying a blue sphere THAT'S NEVER EXPLAINED AT ALL.)

Honestly, I really wanted to like this movie. And I will undoubtedly see it again on DVD, especially if Kelly releases a version of the original cut (which runs nearly 3 hours - the theatrical version is closer to 2 1/2). I'm a fan of big, sprawling messes in general - hell, I own Magnolia - and I think I could have been brought around if even one of Kelly's genres had worked out. If it had been funny, or an interesting s.f. concept, or a black satire, I think I might have almost liked it. But again, Kelly mixes too much together without finishing a single thought, and while Southland is certainly audacious and sure to become a cult classic, it's just not anything you could dub a success.

Oh, and if anyone's still on the fence - Bai Ling and Jon Lovitz are both in it.