That is why people champion the chickpeas out of independent cinema. They look at these outsider auteurs putting their pre-natal visions of viable artistry up on the screen and jizz their jeans in unabashed love lettering. Only problem is, for all the hand held jittery camera chaos, for the far too open confessions to sexual and/or moral decay and 'you are there' sense of authenticity, most indie films are just the same old bullspit retrofitted to meet the current generation of disaffected youth. Call them unique or eccentric, idiosyncratic or insular, but when it comes right down to it, most of these moviemakers are recycling old ideas without the necessary knowledge to understand how derivative they truly are.

Operation Midnight Climax suffers from this 'everything old is moldy again" ideology. It wants to take on such contemporary complaints as sexual dysfunction, shadow governments, conspiracy theories and secret societies. And it thinks that by branching off into never-ending rants filled with big words and overt intellectualism that we won't notice the truth, which is that this is nothing more than a mensch on the make movie, a derivative doofus hitting on dames diorama where endless chatter is foreplay, and our hero scores successfully, even without charisma or a single redeeming characteristic.

The DVD:
Will is a sick, sick man. Not in a perverted way...well, maybe in a perverted way. But he is far too obsessed with governmental conspiracies and men in black suits to pay attention to his other raging fixation – SEX! That's right, Will is trying to find the perfect sensual experience, and when he meets the King of the Witches at a convention, he learns about the total 'tantric' experience. Basically requiring partners to hold off on orgasm for as long as possible, the King promises that Will will travel to another dimension, visit outer space and see "the blue lights", all suggesting a kind of spiritual/sexual nirvana. Naturally, Will needs accomplices to try out his new found fantasy, so he devises a secret society, similar to the Masons, made up of all the women he knows in New York. This, naturally, makes his steady girlfriend, the dominatrix diva/bike messenger Kali very unhappy. As she follows him around the city, Will talks to every girl he meets. He also looks out for the men in black, who he is convinced will thwart his plans for the ultimate night of nookie which he has labeled Operation Midnight Climax.

Perhaps one of the most pathetic excuses for a movie ever made, Operation Midnight Climax is a 75 minute self indulgent bit of claptrap passing itself off as an inspired original comedy. The pet project of writer/director/star Will Keenan and his co-conspirator in crappiness, Gadi Harel, this incredibly sad stool sample of a ribald urban romance just can't figure out what in the fungo bat it wants to be. Constantly hiding the fact that its knotty narrative revolves around a guy cruising for poon with lots of jump cuts, logic leaps and hackneyed hemorrhaging, this barely coherent mess doesn't deserve the professionalism it provides. Playing its NYC locale for all it's worth and getting every low budget penny's worth, we keep hoping that the script will somehow catch up to the atmosphere and interest the Manhattan locale provides. Naturally, such entertainment equilibrium never arrives.

The first problem with this perplexing pile of pond scum is the screenplay. Though it probably read dead clever on the page, it is hard to fathom that this confusing, mobieus strip of scribbling ever had a cogent wood pulp form. Much of Operation Midnight Climax feels incredibly improvised, caught off the cuff and made up on the spot to take advantage of people and places before the cops came cruising for permits. Characterization is on the lowest of common denominators, with everyone except Will being personified by a particular attribute they possess (Kali dresses in black leather and kicks her man in the nuts as a greeting, best friend Chip wears foil around his head to keep "the government" from controlling "the computer chip" inside him, etc.). Even our hero is occasionally reduced to a prop persona as he moves away from monologues and meaningful conversations and into masks and public pratfalling as a way of showing a possible third personality dimension.

Had Harel and Keenan stooped to actually give us a group of likeable individuals we could relate to and/or root for, Operation Midnight Climax might have been a bright, if sometimes baffling, slice of city life. Instead, to cover up their characters clear lack of plausible persona, they fill the story will all manner of asides – interview footage, archival material, meaningless montages and even more pointless pop culture riffs – to try and make chicken salad out of pure gall guano. As a result, Operation Midnight Climax occasionally feels like reading the ADD inspired rantings of the main character from Darren Aronofsky's π after he swallowed one too many chewable Cialis. Nothing gels, story arcs don't pay off, characters careen out of the middle of nowhere, never to return and we are left wondering, more times than is pleasant, why we are witnessing the scene playing out before us.

It would take actors of rare skill, amazing adeptness and powerful Method mannerisms to even begin to make any of this work. Sadly, Keenan and his cast of fellow question marks (as in WHO?) aren't up to the challenge. As our leading man, Mr. K is all over the thespian map, trying to be funny and frightened, witty and wild all at the same time – usually within the same sentence – often, in a single syllable in said statement. He doesn't play off his fellow performers so much as play over them, reaching for realms of ridiculousness that he never can fully achieve. As if in response to his hyperactive chimp routine, the rest of the actors also pour on the hambone, shrieking or shouting their lines with all the subtlety of a 42nd street stripper. Especially guilty are Caren Bernstein, who seems to be channeling an S&M version of Carrie-Anne Moss's Trinity in her portrayal of Kali, and Michael Showalter, who can't decide if his mental hampered character Chip is retarded, or just strictly socially inept. Together with all the ancillary antics of the other players attempting to support this cinematic struggle (including an odd cameo by Michael Musto of The Village Voice), this film feels phonier than a Park Avenue performance artist.

Secondly, for a film about sex, there is very little arousing or exciting about Operation Midnight Climax. When your title takes you halfway to the total titillation package offered by your movie, you know your in need of some tacked on T&A immediately. Yet aside from a single scene where Will discusses his plan with a gal pal whose changing in a department store dressing room (allowing us to see her substantial fake skin sacks for a couple of sexless seconds) there is no real feminine physicality in this film. It's as if Harel and Keenan knew that if they added lots of skin, people would be screaming that they were merely hiding behind the pontification to actually support some manner of softcore sex farce.

And when you stop and think about the premise, you actually understand why such a concept would be forwarded. This is a movie about a guy wanting to get it on with his own secret society of sex slaves so that they all can channel some manner of magical power, escape the boundaries of this universe and ride the power of the penis to defeat their Establishment enemies...or something like that. So a film this dipped in the firmament of flesh should have at least a little breast and butt to show. Unfortunately, our creators make everyone keep their clothes on, and the result is as boring as it sounds.

The final facet that absolutely kills Operation Midnight Climax is its mosaic moviemaking style. Some may consider it novel and unique. Others can champion its lack of mise-en-scene and narrative drive. And there may even be a few who feel Kenan is on to something with his cinematic stream of consciousness style and complete lack of visual coherence. Like witnessing what it must look like inside the mind of a schizophrenic who has dropped acid, the entire frame of Kenan's film is filled with imagery far too busy to be beneficial to his story. Characters either move like they are afflicted with St. Vitus Dance or stand so stoic as to render the composition inert. There is no internal flow to the filmmaking, just random scenes tossed at the screen without rhyme, reason or rationale. Chase scenes veer off into flashbacks, conversations are interrupted by both aural and visual asides, characters talk over and around each other and occasionally, tacky directorial tricks like slow motion or oddball lenses will lift us even further out of the metropolitan mania we are supposed to be experiencing. To say that there is no style to Operation Midnight Climax would be lying. To say that said style serves the film, or entertains the public, would be an outright lie...and lies make Baby Jesus cry.

The result is something more aggravating than inspired. Had Kenan controlled himself more, sacrificed some of his shtick to get deeper into his character and the film's ideas, he might have made something out of this strange jigsaw of a jokefest. But when you're not laughing with or at a movie, but to yourself for bothering with this bunkum, you're not in for a nice time at the movies. With a title that is as baffling as the entire premise, plot and performances contained therein, Operation Midnight Climax is independent cinema at its most miserable. The only cosmic connection you will make with this movie is the universal disdain felt by anyone who comes in contact with it. This is one invitation to a secret society that you should reject on principle alone.

The Video:
Offering a clean, clear, 1.66:1 non-anamorphic letterboxed presentation, Operation Midnight Climax looks very good. The street scenes of New York have a real bite and ambience and the overall image offers plenty of color and detail. Once again, Kenan's compositions are far too cramped, rendering scenes nearly incoherent in their action and activity. Still, had as much attention been paid to the script and acting as there was to the transfer, Operation Midnight Climax would be a much better movie. As it stands, it's just a professional looking load of junk.

The Audio:
Operation Midnight Climax is offered in a Dolby Digital Stereo soundtrack that is heavy with urban alternative music that occasionally buries the dialogue. Throughout the course of this bass heavy mix, voices are muffled and subtle scenes flummoxed. When it is understandable, the conversations are crystal clear and easily comprehensible. Too bad that Kenan and Harel rely on some rather routine tunes to obliterate their other aural properties.

The Extras:
In what is perhaps the strangest element of this DVD presentation, there is not a single, solitary bonus feature on the disc. No trailer, no tell-all making-of, not even a self-congratulatory commentary track with the filmmakers incessantly patting themselves on the back for a job well done. Instead, we are left to our own devices and have to create our own reasons for why this amateurish tripe was conceived, written and produced. In retrospect, maybe the lack of added content is a good thing. As intolerable as the film is, having to hear someone enamored by their own self-proclaimed genius rant on about it for the entire running time would be far too much. Besides, that would require sitting through the film a second time, so in essence, there is an upside to this bare bones digital offering.

Final Thoughts:
Feeling like it exploded, unformed and malfeasant, directly from the shattered Id of its crackpot creators, Operation Midnight Climax is too anarchic to truly succeed. Instead of an audience willing to accept this muddled mess on its own terms, what this movie really needs is a couple dozen rewrites, a much stronger central focus and a cast that actually understands the need for subtlety and seriousness in some of its performance parameters. Had the team of Will Keenan and Gadi Harel realized that not EVERY idea that comes into their heads needs to be visualized, talked about or hinted at during the course of their 77-minute running time, perhaps their story wouldn't have been so disorganized. But the cacophonous kitchen sink approach, incorporating far too many underdeveloped ideas and tangential trash, ends up giving us a reverse entertainment migraine, also known as a pain in the ass. Independent filmmaking may indeed one day save cinema, but only if it roots its re-imagining in originality. Sadly, Operation Midnight Climax is the same old song, with nothing remotely redeeming in its vacuous verse or clipped chorus. This is one crappy cult that should consider taking the Jonestown way out, pronto.

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