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Southland Tales
All your legislation can't stop teen masturbation
2005
Review: November 23, 2007
Director: Richard Kelly
Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Seann William Scott , Sarah Michelle Gellar, Mandy Moore, Wallace Shawn
I could not be more emphatic in saying "yes."
THE SETUP:
A satire on everything.
DISCUSSION:
This is the second movie by Richard Kelly, writer / director of the wildly popular Donnie Darko [which I thought was a load of horseshit, btw], which was booed and mocked at Cannes in 2006. It finally received distribution, and Kelly trimmed 20 minutes out of it, added a ton of special effects and significantly changed the ending, and now here it is in theaters! Most reviews are saying that it's a total, unfocused load of crap, while a few like its lunacy and freewheeling satire. I am one of the latter; I thought it was a blast, I never got bored for a second, and was laughing throughout—but not as much as my friend, who was hysterical nearly the whole time.
Here's the deal. The movie begins in 2005, with a sudden nuclear explosion in Texas. We see a website-like entertainment interface with chapter titles on the left, and ads for Bud Light and Hustler on the right. We swiftly review, though the voice-over of Justin Timberlake, the years 2005-08, which saw the U.S. going to war with Iran, Syria, Jordan, and others. We also ran out of energy around that time, until this guy the Baron Von Westphalen, hilariously played by Wallace Shawn, invented a form of energy that uses the ocean in ways no one really understands. The country has fallen under the rule of a sort of government / corporation called USIdent, who are resisted by the neo-Marxists. We get chapter title for installments 1-3 very quickly, then the story proper begins with chapter 4. Why? Because, back when they thought this movie might do better, there was going to be a series of graphic novels [the movie website makes it look as though they're available] that would represent chapters 1-3, and this movie is chapters 4-6. It also MUST be a reference to the whole Star Wars thing.
Anyway, it's impossible to summarize—I didn't even bother taking notes—but here's the basic deal. The Rock plays Boxer Santoros, a former movie star with ties to the presidential party of Eliot/Frost who woke up an amnesiac in the desert, and is now shacked up with porn star and cultural figure Krysta Now, played by Sarah Michelle Gellar. They have written a screenplay together that has drawn the interests of the government, because it seems to parallel the secret energy process [among other things]. Meanwhile, Seann William Scott is a twin pretending to be his brother, a police officer, who is currently being held prisoner by the neo-Marxists. Just offshore, Justin Timberlake narrates the story from his gun turret. It all proceeds from there, but in such a scattershot way I couldn't possibly hope to synopsize the plot.
What stands out in retrospect are the various tiny little jokes and details of the world. The Baron is hilarious, surrounded by a sexpot Asian on one side and the midget psychic from Poltergeist on the other. The President's wife, played as a steely gloss on Barbara Bush by Miranda Richardson, directs USIdent activities around the world. We see USIdent workers monitoring Americans in their bathrooms. We see a commercial of an SUV mounting and fucking another SUV. I was quite amused by seeing a big Hustler logo on the side of a tank in Iraq. And then there's Krysta Now, who hosts a beachside topical chat-discussion show like The View, but with porn stars, and is launching an energy drink and other products while also promoting her new album, Teen Horniness Is Not a Crime. We see a part of the video, which is hilarious, and you can hear the full song, actually sung by Gellar, here. Don't miss the lyric "All your legislation can't stop teen masturbation." There's a commercial with a guy saying "Do you think your personal privacy is more important than my child getting blown up by terrorists?" Etc. It's just all a big splattergun and it's shooting at absolutely everything.
The movie it most closely reminded me of was I Heart Huckabees, just because it's a very loose, very broad, hilarious satire of EVERYTHING. And as with Huckabees, either you'll find it the funniest thing you've ever seen, or like nails on a chalkboard. The critic in the Onion said something like it's one-third inspired and two-thirds just irritating, and I think this speaks to that divide. I agree that maybe only one-third of the material really works, but I found the other two-thirds to be hilariously inventive and bizarre regardless of whether it "worked" or not.
The cast is great. The Rock is amazing to look at and really charismatic, toward the end he was running around in a tux and it seemed painfully obvious that someone needs to give him a Bond-like role. Maybe XXX3? Seann William Scott is very good and visually yummy, and plays his role straight, which will be a revelation to those who only know him from his silly roles. I love Sarah Michelle Gellar anyway, so it was a relief to find that she's wonderful here, so much so that I was bummed more people won't end up seeing this. She plays her character completely straight, never condescending to her, and it works. She also looks fabulous in her porn star getups. Just the sight of her mindlessly sipping from Krysta Now energy drink with her own face on it is enough to get a chuckle from me.
Surely there are better-made movies that are more coherent and on-message, but they're also often that much more boring and safe. This may be a mess, but it's an interesting one. And, if you're a lefty and you read the paper, you might find a lot of the little jabs here, juvenile and hit-or-miss as they may be, pretty satisfying and funny. It didn't leave me with much to think about, but I laughed my ass off for two hours and twenty minutes, and I'm still ready to watch the excised 20 minutes.
SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?
I would. I expect this will turn into a popular cult film, it's so dense and funny, so you might want to go check it out now.
