Southland Tales
Tales from the Southland fail to amuse, entertain or produce coherent thought.
Imagine you see a preview for a movie about Los Angeles set in the near future, in an election year. It's topical and relevant, practically white noise considering all the politically charged movies on the recent market. Now imagine that a science element is added—the lisping kidnapper from The Princess Bride has discovered the secret to perpetual motion.
It still sounds like a relevant, interesting film. Here’s where it starts to get ridiculous—even for a movie. Sarah Michelle Gellar discovers an amnesiac, Dwayne Johnson. Gellar’s character wants to use Johnson to fluff up her porn career. It just so happens that Johnson plays movie star Boxer Santaros and is married to Madeline Frost Santaros (played by Mandy Moore).
Madeline’s father is a senator running in the 2008 election, and her mother is the head of the NSA—except now it’s an Orwellian NSA with big “mother” watching over everyone. She’s specifically looking for an underground resistance staffed by none other than Amy Poehler, Cheri Oteri and a few others. This film goes way beyond asking the audience to suspend belief. The audience has to believe the unbelievable fact that they are sitting through this film.
Amy Poehler is killed by a corrupt cop who is in the pocket of the NSA, while Cheri Oteri is gunned down in plain sight of hundreds of civilians (because she caused a public disturbance with a gun). After these deaths, another member of the resistance gains access to the launch of a perpetual motion controlled blimp. All the important people in the Southland (LA) are slated to attend. Unfortunately, the perpetual motion machine was tested on military personnel in Iraq. Enter the rift into the fourth dimension.
See where this is going? Sound crazy? The audience expects one thing, and gets something not only completely different, but something annoying, irrelevant and pointless. Not worth the two and a half hours the viewer has to sit through to make it to the meaningless end.
Written by: Tracy Elledge
Reviewers Rating: 1
Reader's Rating: 0
Reader's Votes: 0
Added: 1-Apr-2008
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