Get sober with ‘Southland Tales’

To dismiss Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko follow-up, Southland Tales, as a disaster is too simplistic. It is indeed a muddled, overreaching, and astoundingly pretentious mess. But there’s also a lot of talent on display, and few films are as likely to provoke, and even enrage, viewers this year. Much like Mulholland Drive (a film it desperately wants to be), Southland Tales refuses to cough up easy answers; unlike Lynch’s film, however, you can’t help but feel that the only journey Kelly is taking you on is one deep inside his own bong.

Set during the election of 2008, three years after a nuclear strike on a Texas suburb, the film trucks in extreme post-9/11 absurdity. The government has cracked down Big Brother-style, and radical liberals—dubbed “neo-Marxists”—are plotting a revolution in the streets of Los Angeles. Meanwhile, a mysterious drug has hit the streets from the frontlines of Iraq, a vacant porn starlet (Sarah Michelle Gellar) looks to create an empire, a strange new energy source known as “Fluid Karma” is about to be unveiled, and a major movie star (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) may or may not have gone missing. Sprinkled among these boggling scenarios are moments of outright lunacy, some inspired (a man whose reflection seems to be lagging) and some agonizing (Justin Timberlake lip-syncing to the Killers while blond bombshells dance Busby Berkeley-style on Skee-Ball machines around him).

For a while all this nonsense is entertaining to watch. Kelly piles mystery upon mystery, and as you wait for him to bring it all together the sheer audacity on display threatens to win you over. But by the time the chaotic third act arrives it becomes apparent that, as with every great high, the comedown reveals little beyond foggy absurdity. The idea of The Rock onboard a zeppelin attempting to explain quantum physics may have seemed genius when it was conjured from the clouds, but in action it’s simply ridiculous. Southland Tales, despite all its creativity, makes you feel like the only sober one in the room.

SOUTHLAND TALES DIR. RICHARD KELLY | RATED R | AT SELECT THEATERS

Tags: donnie darko, Film, richard kelly, southland tales