I'm about as a big fan of Donnie Darko you can find. I believe it's about as perfect as a movie can get. I would have bet anything that writer/director Richard Kelly was going to be the next great filmmaker. After watching Southland Tales, I'm not so sure anymore. I still think that he has great potential, but Tales is about as huge a sophomore slump you could name. He's really going to have to knock it out of the park with his third film to get my confidence back.

There was so much fanfare, so many compliments thrown his way after Donnie Darko, that I think it went to his head. He was so confidant that he could do no wrong, that he used every single idea he had in one movie, whether they were good or bad. There are a few good ideas in Tales, but they're completely obscured by the overwhelming number of bad ones. There are far too many plots and characters in this film, it seems that as soon as any one idea starts to develop we're quickly off to another one. We're never given a chance to care.

The film starts with an interesting premise. In 2006 America was hit by another terrorist attack, this time in the form of a nuclear weapon dropped in Texas. The Government seizes upon the opportunity to turn America into a military state, with constant surveillance of all citizens. Really, not that far fetched of an idea. I liked the idea of an alternate present, but Kelly tries to tell the story from every conceivable angle. If he'd kept this grand idea to a smaller scale, focusing on a few characters, the film might have been a lot better.

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson plays Boxer Santaros an action movie star researching a role as a cop, for a movie he's hoping to produce with his porn-star girlfriend Krysta Now, played by Sarah Michelle Gellar. Seann William Scott is the cop he gets to ride along with, but he's not really a cop, he's an amnesiac taking the place of his twin brother who's being held for unknown reasons by a group of tattoo artists with plans to overthrow the Government. Justin Timberlake plays a Iraq War veteran, who now sits over Venice Beach with a sniper rifle protecting a new power source that sits off shore; he's also the narrator of the film, who somehow knows everything. There are more characters, the tattoo artist/terrorists, the inventor of the new power source, those who work for him, a Government employee who works for a watchdog group, her bosses, a Presidential hopeful and quite a few more. Too many to list, and definitely way too many to care about.

Every single one of them is a recognizable actor, many of them former Saturday Night Live players. I guess Kelly hired a lot of comedians, because he intended Southland Tales to be a comedy. At least he says so in the making-of, but I honestly don't remember laughing once. The only thing that I found funny was the ridiculousness of the scenarios. One moment there's a serious diatribe against the Government, the next a musical-dream sequence. The plot is so convoluted that it's nearly impossible to tell where it's going or what's just happened. There's no neatly tied up explanation at the ending either, if anything it makes it more confusing. What reason could Boxer's wife and mistress possibly have to dance together, I'm not sure, and I don't think Kelly has an explanation either, other than to throw us further down the rabbit's hole.

The film is well made, great photography, good special effects, the way-out-there costume and set design, make it feel like a whole other world, and great choices in music. The acting seems to be intentionally over-the-top, adding to the unnatural feeling of the entire film. It's nearly impossible to feel compassion for any single character in this film, when none of them convince you that they care about themselves. The whole movie feels like it was designed to keep the audience an outside observer, which is an odd feeling. Movies always try to draw you in, even if they don't always succeed.

I think that Kelly was going for a grand artistic expression, but he doesn't quite have the chops to yet pull it off. He should have waited to get a few more films under his belt before swinging for the fences. Southland Tales is a grand failure, that some may come to embrace as a cult-film, because of it's pure ambition and weirdness. I may give it another chance somewhere down the road, maybe gain a new perspective, but I don't think my opinion will change much. - Grade: D

By all rights, I should have enjoyed 2001 Maniacs. It's full of graphic violence, naked girls and over-the-top performances; all the stuff I love about horror films. If you're a horror fan, I suggest you give it a try for those elements alone. It may work for you, where it didn't for me. For some reason it never connected. I'll try to figure out why in the next few paragraphs.

It may have been the horror movie cliche' of the characters getting lost on a road trip; it was especially stupid here, where there is a detour sign in the middle of a wide-open highway, and without much thought they characters follow a backwater dirt road. Where they find a small town and they're welcomed by the most extreme rednecks you've ever met, who offer them to stay for a party. As they were supposed to be on their way to Dayton Beach for a week in a beach house, I really don't think they'd bother. But they're characters in horror films, they're supposed to do stupid things, so it wasn't that.

Soon after this, one of the girls follows a "charming" southern-gentlemen out to a barn for some easy sex, but he decides to draw-and-quarter her instead. She thinks he's tying her up for something kinky, instead he rips her apart limb by limb. It's a pretty original scene, and it's pulled off neatly, with some good camera-work and grotesque special effects. It's the best death in the film, which is full of good bloody work. Overall, I was pretty pleased with the film's kills, they wimp out in a couple of scenes, but for the most part it was pretty graphic.

Robert Englund hams it up as Mayor Buckman, he relishes in the chance to be a lead character in a horror film again. Lin Shaye, who's better known for her comedy work, is a lot of fun here too; she really gets into torturing these kids. Giuseppe Andrews, who was fun in Cabin Fever, puts on a cheesy southern accent, and a cheesier southern suit, and is fun as the psychotic, ladies-man. Horror director Eli Roth has a brief cameo as a nasty hitchhiker, that could have been more fun. The rest of the cast is unknowns, and they're all uniformly terrible and forgettable. That may have been the reason, I need at least one character to connect with, and they were all way too lame to care about.

The story is pretty typical, after following the detour, a group of guys, followed by a group of girls and a biker and his babe show up in this small, hidden town. They're offered to be the guests of honor at the town's annual party. But of course their hosts have nefarious plans for them, i.e., barbecuing them for dinner. They're all dispatched in nasty ways, without putting up much of a fight. That might have been it too, there was no twist or hook, the film takes the path of least resistance, offering up nothing new.

But I've seen plenty of horror films that follow the same-old-storyline and enjoyed them more than 2001 Maniacs. It was decently directed, there are some fun camera angles; but it could have used some more pep, the newbie actors needed a kick in the butt. And I guess that's what it was, all the right horror film elements are here in the right order, but it's presented like business-as-usual, with no spirit and nothing truly compelling.

Maybe it was me, maybe I wasn't in the right mood... but I don't think so. I may give it another try in a few years, I've changed my opinions about movies before, but it's extremely rare. Like I said, if you're a horror fan, give it a chance, it may work for. For now, I'll check out the original, Two Thousand Maniacs!, directed by the legendary Herschell Gordon Lewis, I have a feeling I'll enjoy it a lot more.