I've absolutely no idea what to make of the bizarre 2000 obscurity known as Stalled. It's about a crew of young musicians who end up broken down and stuck in Hereabouts, Alabama, where they come across the most ridiculously stereotypical "inbred hayseed clan" since the final episode of Hee Haw was mercifully gone from the airwaves.

So the flick is a broad, blustery, and very stupid comedy about how goofy and disgusting the deep Southerners really are, right? Seems that way, what with the married cousins who are desperately trying to unload their sexy jailbait daughter on every eligible guy who crosses the state line, the grime-covered goofballs with rotten teeth, and the overall sheen of sliminess that covers the non-city-folk characters. So on the level of straight comedy, Stalled is not only annoyingly distasteful, but also pretty consistently unamusing.

But then somewhere around the third interminable half-hour, Stalled decides that it wants its cast of clichés and kooks to be taken as, y'know, real "flesh & blood" characters -- as if we haven't just spent the last hour sneering at their garish escapades. And this is where Stalled gets even worse, as if the filmmakers simply ran out of incest jokes and decided, on a whim, to shoot for some melodrama.

Suffice to say the combination doesn't work.

Buried within this misshapen mess of an indie are a few noteworthy performances, mainly from the ridiculously bubbly presence of Amy Lucas as the world's giddiest piece of jailbait. Also semi-intriguing is the presence of a mysterious pharmaceutical salesman who wanders just around the periphery of the "plot," but this character's subplot is so vague and detached that it peters out long before the end credits finally show up.

The DVD

Video: It's a fairly watchable, if not all that attractive, full frame transfer.

Audio: Dolby Digital 2.0.

Extras: A handful of cast filmographies and some trailers for Stalled, Lethal Force, and Shake Down.

Final Thoughts

Stalled was written and produced by a woman named Mindy Weinberg. For my sake, I sure hope we're not related; my mom would kill me for not being able to enjoy a movie made by my aunt's cousin's grand-niece.