Reviewer's Bias*
Loves: Donnie Darko, Visual creativity
Likes: Richard Kelly, Out-there filmmaking, Kevin Smith
Dislikes: Epic-length films with dead spots
Hates: Sophomore slumps

The Movie
All you need to know about this movie is that it never played in a theater near me. It's not as though I live in some one-traffic-light town. I live in a major metropolitan suburban area. Despite that, the star-studded second film from the director of the cult classic Donnie Darko couldn't get a screen in any of the many multiplexes within driving distance. You have to be either seriously bad or seriously odd to not be shown near me.

At it's core, Southland Tales is about Boxer (Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson), a famous actor married to Madeline (Mandy Moore) the daughter of a presidential candidate. Boxer wakes up in the desert one day with no memory. If you have a seat belt available, put it on now. Boxer falls in with Krysta (Sarah Michelle Gellar), a porn star trying to get a reality TV show, with the help of Cyndi (Nora Dunn), a TV producer who's actually a revolutionary, working with a band of underground Neo-Marxists (including Amy Poehler and Cheri Oteri), who are manipulating Ronald (Seann William Scott) a cop with a twin brother, to create a media storm that will topple USIdent, a national security force run by Nana Mae Frost (Miranda Richardson) , who's Madeline's mom. All the while, they are being watched by Abilene (Justin Timberlake), who narrates almost every inch of the first third of the film. Incredibly, I have revealed almost nothing of the plot to this point, and have ruined nothing. That's how deep and convoluted this movie is. And there's a musical scene. And a computer-generated animated scene of two cars with genitals having intercourse. And monkeys.

Once you get past the general story, you will find yourself drifting in a mix of political satire, religious allegory, conspiracy theory and near-future fantasy, and it's genuinely difficult to tell which way is up, especially when you've got Wallace Shawn (The Princess Bride) playing an energy guru who looks like a bad guy from the Phantom Zone Though Kelly's visuals are more staid than they were in Donnie Darko, the storytelling has gotten exponentially more twisted, drawing on America's recent history and current events (maybe it's too soon to make a satire about Iraq?) and playing them as jumping-off points for something akin to a cautionary tale, but more like an alternate Days of Future Past/"Twilight Zone" adventure. It is so mixed-up that, at one point, I thought I may have figured it all out, like waking from a fever dream. With the world getting increasingly pressurized, anti-social and individualistic, and many people are either in therapy or on medication, that everyone is simply going crazy. So when you have a movie inhabited solely by crazy people, the results, naturally, would be crazy, which ironically, makes the film completely sane. I may be reaching a bit there though (and it doesn't explain the excessive narration, which I was always taught was a crutch for bad storytelling.)

I think I could have easily enjoyed this movie (and I truly wanted to) if I saw some clues early on of what was to come, but the first 2/3rds of Southland Tales is a somewhat realistic vision of what would happen if civil liberties continue to erode to the point of a big-brother government controlling the Internet and watching our every move. Following that angle, and throwing in some Illuminati-type powers trying to take over the fragile energy industry, was the basis for a fine film worth making. But then it seems like everything we learn about and everything we see is just a set-up to get the pieces in place for a larger-scale redux of the concepts from Donnie Darko. Once we find out what's actually going on in this movie, does anyone really care? Have we enough invested in Boxer and company to be concerned or happy for them? Not likely, since we've spent almost two hours meeting almost 20 somewhat important characters, and barely spend any time with any of them. In a way, it's like Magnolia, but with a more well-known cast and a more ambitious, yet far less complete storyline. Worse yet, you'll find yourself often saying, "What the eff?" as something inexplicable happens out of nowhere. I mean, really...is that a table full of midgets? Why is the scary little lady from Poltergeist holding the Phantasm ball on a set of stairs like she's a supervillain? What the hell is Bai Ling doing here?

The casting probably didn't help either. Johnson is OK as Boxer, but when he does his nervous tic of twiddling his fingers and looking disturbed, it's hard to take him seriously as either hero or pawn (a problem for other non-dramatic actors here, like Lovitz or Oteri.) Putting Gellar as Krysta was inspired if only because the sci-fi geeks would kill to see Buffy as a porn star, but she hardly gets to do anything besides look pretty (same goes for Moore.) Beyond that, the film is so heavy on notable actors that it becomes stunt casting and actually detracts from the characters, creating the film equivalent of Circus of the Stars. When you're getting Janeane Garofalo for approximately one second of screen time, you're trying too hard (though she may have been cut down from the first version of the film.) On the positive side, it was nice to see John Larroquette and Curtis Armstrong on-screen,and it's obvious that Lou Taylor Pucci (Thumbsucker) isn't suffering from typecasting, as he plays an annoying "wigger" who somehow becomes a central piece of the entire film.

Any of the movie's notable missteps would be more easily forgiven if it wasn't for the indulgent 144-minutes it takes to watch the whole thing. Why is it that the truly original film concepts, the ones that try something utterly new, rarely check in at a reasonable 90 minutes? Is it because the brain cells of really creative minds aren't occupied with trivial matters like editing or pacing? Perhaps because they refuse to allow their imagination to be limited, time has no power on them as well? It's unfortunate, because Southland Tales only really hits its stride in the final 40 minutes, an awesome sci-fi freak-out, and by that point, the only people paying attention are the highly patient and the overly optimistic. Considering that we already lost about 16 minutes on the way to this cut, I'd venture a guess that with some judicious edits, you could bring this puppy in at 120 minutes and end up with a lean, mean satire of the American political landscape with a touch of sci-fi for flavor. Perhaps the inevitable double-dip could have a studio cut (ala Brazil ("Love Conquers California?") to see if a mainstream sensibility could save this film from the good intentions of its creator.

The DVD
A one-disc release, the DVD is packed in a standard keepcase, which is wrapped in a rather pointless slipcover. Seriously...if you're going to waste paper this way, do something different than the big-head art. Put some foil on there. Make it shine! Anyway... the DVD features a static anamorphic widescreen main menu with options to watch the film, select scenes, adjust languages and check out the special features. There are no audio options, while subtitles are available in English, French and Spanish, along with closed captioning.

The Quality
The anamorphic widescreen image is good from start to finish, but it's not the intense experience that you'd expect from a recent decently-budgeted film. The special effects (see the 9/11-ish attacks early on and the final blow-out scene) can look a bit dull as they stand out too much, and there's a bit of softness to the image that feels wrong. Overall though, the colors are bright and appropriately saturated, the black levels are solid, and there's not a speck of dirt, damage or noticeable digital artifacting.

The Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack delivers on the films many explosions and gunshots, while keeping the dialogue relatively clean and easy to understand, but where it really shines is in presenting the movie's atmospheric music. Moby's score, much like the source-heavy music from Donnie Darko, is hauntingly beautiful, and the surrounds help give it a dramatic boost, with the sides and rear making you feel the sound. It's a really nice job of shifting atmospheric touches to the surrounds and an enjoyably loud experience, matching the volume of the movie.

The Extras
The main extra is "USIdent TV: Surveilling the Southland," a nearly 34-minute featurette that goes behind the scenes on the film, in the guise of a presentation from the government surveillance system in the film. Interviews with the stars and crew are mixed with footage from the set, focusing mainly on how the film came together, including special effects, set design and camera set-ups. It's fun to hear from people involved as they either pretend to understand what's happening or freely admit they have no idea. Wallace Shawn, in particular, picks his words carefully as he discusses the cohesiveness of the film. Don't watch this before the film though, as much of the plot is revealed as scenes are broken down by the participants, but definitely watch it after, as there are some decent explanations about what the hell you just saw.

(It's worth noting that on the web site of the group that produced this featurette (along with some of the Donnie Darko Director's Cut extras), that they were working on a feature-length documentary on the making of Southland Tales. Whether this is the end result, cut down due to the reception the film received, or if this is just part of the overall picture, is unknown.)

The other extra is a nine-minute animated short, "This is the Way the World Ends." It's produced by the same people behind the featurette, and it's about the same topic as the main film, but whether it was commissioned for this DVD or actually has a connection to the film is unclear. Either way, it's a somewhat crudely animated story about a sea creature learning about how humans destroyed their species. It's wholly depressing, but pretty nicely designed in terms of the way the story is told.

As is normally the case with Sony DVDs, you get a crapload of trailers, 16 in all, including the somewhat interesting Zombie Strippers, but no preview for Southland Tales.

The Bottom Line
Considering that Southland Tales earned back perhaps a fraction of its moderate $17 million budget at the box office, it would be a surprise to see Kelly get another chance to fail so spectacularly. More than likely, he'll have to walk the Kevin Smith post-Mallrats path, which really might be best for him. If someone had scaled back the ambition here a bit, it could have worked. But hey, you have to give Kelly credit for going for it when he had the chance, giving us a modern-day Brazil in terms of pure non-commercial studio-backed oddity. The DVD at least looks good and sound terrific, while the extras are decent, with the featurette carrying the slack. I couldn't, in good conscience, recommend that anyone buy this film without seeing it, as one out of every five people will actually hate it. But it may reward a few extra viewings, if you can get yourself to do that. Kelly fans will absolutely want to check this out, along with anyone else who believes in the possibilities inherit in an auteur, and those who enjoy an all-out cinematic smorgasbord.

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*The Reviewer's Bias section is an attempt to help readers use the review to its best effect. By knowing where the reviewer's biases lie on the film's subject matter, one can read the review with the right mindset.