Richard Kelly thinks highly of himself and of his movies. He fought the studio who wanted to release an edited version of Southland Tales and in the end they gave him the movie and let him do with it what he wanted. Kelly seems intent on creating movies that show how creative or clever he can be without a high regard for continuity or story telling. This movie was booed at film festivals, panned mercilessly by every critic, played in Sacramento for only one week and the Blockbuster employee tried to talk me out of renting it for about 15 minutes. Yet, I had a pull to watch it. I had just come off of Donnie Darko and was ready to be entertained if more than a little confused. Did I make the right decision?
In the near future Justin Timberlake will be stationed on a giant sniper rifle off the pacific ocean and he will be reading from Revelations (The Bible) as The Rock, writes a screen play about the end of the world while banging Sarah Michelle Gellar who will be a porn star, turned pop star, turned marketing whore. In the near future Sean William Scott will be a cop and his twin and Cheri Oteri and Amy Poeller will be liberal crazies trying to destroy the conservative government with Marxist ideology. In this future nothing at all will make sense. Jon Lovitz will appear for no reason at all and in the end, the end of the world may be set off by a guy and his future self finally meeting and touching. Sound like fun? Yeah not so much!
Even if this is a literal adaptation of Revelations (the theory that makes the most sense) Southland Tales may be the single worst movie I have ever seen. The acting is porn star bad, the script is self congratulatory without making any damn sense and even the visuals pale in comparison to Kelly's last movie. The story is so over the top it borderlines on stupid and while it may be trying to grasp at social commentary it all gets lost in the ridiculous stunt casting of former Saturday Night Live performers. However, all of that could be forgiven if I was entertained but on top of all the other faults, this movie is just BORING! I was checking my watch about 5 minutes in and continued to do it throughout this absolute atrocity of a film. It is a slap in the face to real guilty pleasures. If strip clubs are guilty pleasures and hookers just make you feel guilty, Southland Tales is the hooker who follows you home after getting paid and tells your wife about it. I am sure Richard Kelly had a grand master plan when he set out to make it and maybe there are people out there who appreciate this brand of disgusting movie, but I feel like not only was I raped over 2.5 hours of my life, I am dumber, slower, uglier, meaner and more uninteresting because of Southland Tales.
Final Grade: FF--
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