Southland Tales

Richard Kelly proves he's a one-hit wonder

I grabbed this movie because the director was Richard Kelly, the same guy who did Donnie Darko, and I LOVED Donnie Darko. I thought it was sheer genius in conception and production. The casting was remarkable, and the plot held onto your ass all the way to the credits.

At this moment, I’m sitting in front of my computer wracking my brain to figure out if that was beginner’s luck or the blind pig and acorn theory.

Southland Tales is a discombobulated semi-Orwellian parody of the Bush administration starring the real Bush administration, as well as an in-your-face wake up call about the terrorist/homeland security/paranoid/fragmented hyper-alert war culture America is currently living under.

Except, it isn’t really about that either. It’s the movie Phillip K. Dick would have shot after doing an enormous amount of drugs (which would have been on any day ending with the word “day”) while watching a nun being violated by the entire cast of The Lord of the Rings in a bukkake video.

But it’s not really about THAT either. Honestly, I don’t have the blogspace nor the lifespan to articulate the remotest synopsis of this unbelievably insane movie.

Southland tales is set in the near future, shortly after a nuclear explosion, but still during the current timeline. There is a presidential election that’s being rigged, a senator’s famous son-in-law who’s got amnesia, a porn start with a heart of gold, twin brothers being set up for a murder, neo Marxists, veterans having first Fallujah flashbacks, Jesus (or E.T., I couldn’t tell) embodied in a hostage with a gunshot to the eye, sniper attacks, gang hits, a ferociously unsexy dance between Sarah Michelle Gellar, Mandy Moore and the Rock, some SERIOUSLY funny one-liners, and John Larroquet. The only thing missing is vampires having sex under a train.

If “Brazil” left you a tad confused, “Southland Tales” will have you in a straightjacket before the first hour is over.

There are some hilarious sequences in the movie, and under the knife of a better editor they could have made Southland Tales a classic. Sadly, the movie sinks before it leaves the port, and the looooooooooong segments with fucking volumes of booooooooooring dialogue and meeeeeeaningless setups scenes make you want to start another movie on the side while this one figures out what the hell it’s trying to say. Which is a pity, because there’s an excellent sci-fi comedy trapped in this turkey, crying it’s eyes out because mommy is whoring her sweet ass in the next room to make the rent for the producers. I kept losing interest for 15-20 minutes at a time, only to be drug back in because of a 5 minute scene of pure genius, then they lose me again. Really, I had to double-check to see if Quentin Tarentino had snuck into the editing room or something.

You won't believe what these two do to a Japanese businessman.

The sheer weight of Hollywood A and B list appearances is overwhelming, in the most demeaning roles they could have portrayed for themselves. Which is part of the fun, hearing Sarah Michelle Gellar saying “Teen horniness is NOT a crime!” on her live chat show, or watching the creepy Sicilian from the princess bride order Bai Ling to hack off a Japanese businessman’s hand, or seeing Amy Poehler play out one of her hilarious skits before getting shot. You know how with some actors, like Meryl Streep, even if you've seen them in dozens of roles, they are still able to disappear inside their characters so that you aren't left thinking "There's Meryl Streep" when you see her on the screen? This movie was like the opposite of that. Different actors come on the screen, and all you think is "There's Buffy!" or "There's Justin Timberlake!" or "There's the guy from "Night Court" and the whole past and present cast of SNL!" This has to be on purpose. The overall effect is the sense that you are watching some compressed apocalyptic version of our entire pop culture all together at the end of the world in Southern California.

How Vin Diesel missed the casting call for this thing, I’ll never know. Ironically, The Rock’s character was probably a bit of a stretch for Vin to take on. Which, if you’ve seen Babylon A.D., you’ll know what a stretch THAT is.

I can’t recommend it in good conscience, one of you bastards might hunt me down and force feed me Budweiser in revenge. Go to youtube and watch the best parts, you might like it. But under NO circumstances are you to invest any time or money into the whole flick. Take that as your ONLY WARNING! I’ve done all I can do.