Southland Tales

Director: Richard Kelly
Year Released: 2006
Rating: 0.0

A failure of revolting proportions - Kelly, high on the hubris of making a mediocre cult movie (Donnie Darko) over-praised by teenagers and sci-fi fans, decides to try his hands at making a movie in the style of Thomas Pynchon (even Pynchon fan John Larroquette gets recruited), with apocalyptic overtones, an impossibly complicated plot and dry humor. What the egotistical Kelly never realized, however, is that he doesn't have 1/10th of Pynchon's talent, that film and literature are two different mediums capable of different things and that casting three of the worst actors in Hollywood (Sarah Michelle Gellar, Justin Timberlake and Mandy Moore) in key roles is a huge mistake. This is bloated, unfunny and incoherent, and what's worse: it brings up relevant issues (the Iraq Occupation, the environment, sex in culture) only to do nothing with them. To anyone who thought the car-fucking ad's clever, just know that Kelly got that from the "Mercury Mistress" sketch on Saturday Night Live (coincidentally, where he lifted Cheri Oteri and Amy Poehler).