The rumors of Richard Kelly’s (Donnie Darko) demise were greatly exaggerated. After the disastrous screening of his latest film, Southland Tales, at the Cannes Film Festival, Kelly went back to the editing room and came out with a final product so deliciously ridiculous, it’s extraordinary it will even be released in theaters.
The outlandishness is just one part of Southland Tales, a film set in the United States after a nuclear attack and starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson (The Game Plan). If that isn’t strange enough, rest assured the actual movie is stranger than any description could make clear.
In terms of style, the first five minutes of Southland Tales totally contradict the rest of the movie. Theatergoers will see what appears to be a home video of a family picnic: Everything seems totally realistic … until a nuke detonates in the distance. After a montage of news footage and graphic art, we are dropped off in the near future, in World War III California.
There we meet an array of strange characters, most prominently an amnesic action movie star named Boxer Santaros (Johnson) and a cop named Roland Taverner (Seann William Scott, Mr. Woodcock). To even attempt to describe the plot from there would be a waste of space, but rest assured Boxer and Roland have key roles to play in nothing less than the survival of mankind.
Along the way, Kelly satirizes the U.S. government (the Patriot Act is expanded to control the entire Internet), immigration (interstate visas are required) and American consumerism (a new SUV model shares fuel among cars by sex; seriously, car-sex).
But as the film gets increasingly bizarre, it becomes difficult to see which parts are meant as satire and which parts are just gonzo fun. The National Security Agency employs a group of midgets, a choice that is never explained; by the time Justin Timberlake (Shrek the Third), as the prophetic Pilot Abilene, breaks into a drug-fueled musical number to The Killers’ “All These Things That I’ve Done,” you’ll likely have reached your high point (one way or another).
Everyone in the cast seems to be in on the joke – most do variations on deadpan seriousness, which serve the satire well. In fact, Johnson and Sarah Michelle Gellar (The Return) as porn star Krysta Now both display expert comic timing. And everything from the film’s music to the slow-motion zooms adds to the satire – Kelly has clearly played up this element more than than he did in Donnie Darko. Whereas Donnie Darko had a dramatic, emotional core with some humor, Southland Tales is almost entirely the other way around.
The whole thing feels disjointed for long stretches, but the individual scenes pop with so much weird energy, they almost completely make up for it. It’s so damn funny that the two hour-plus running time only drags a smidge.
A lot of people will absolutely despise Southland Tales, while others will think it’s one of the most creative pieces of cinema released in years. Either way, this film is not going to garner any middle-of-the-road reactions; in fact, expect for Kelly to bomb at cinemas but eventually clean up with another cult DVD hit. Regardless, with Southland Tales as a follow-up to Donnie Darko, Kelly has established himself as one of the most original voices in modern cinema.
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RATING: 4 STARS OUT OF 5
