No. N-o. Is that so hard to say? Two letters, one tiny word, and yet it can save so much time and trouble. If, for example, anyone had dared to say "no" to writer-director Richard Kelly, you wouldn't be reading this review of his epic folly, "Southland Tales."

Kelly's followup to "Donnie Darko" is set in 2008, after a nuclear attack on Texas. Things are bad all over, but actor Boxer Santaros (Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson) is having an especially rough week. After being kidnapped and brainwashed, he's dating a double-dealing porn star (Sarah Michelle Gellar), since he has no memory of his marriage to the daughter (Mandy Moore) of a senator (Holmes Osborne), who - along with the senator's wife (Miranda Richardson) - is plotting some sort of national takeover.

And that's just the first of Kelly's convoluted plot lines. I haven't yet mentioned the neo-Marxists (Amy Poehler, Cheri Oteri) blackmailing the senator with the help of amnesiac twins (both Seann William Scott), or the singing, drug-dealing soldier (Justin Timberlake). Then there's the mad scientist (Wallace Shawn) and his fawning assistant (an unbelievably annoying Bai Ling) who - well, do you have a headache yet?

Because if so, I've just re-created the overall experience of watching the movie, and saved you $10 in the process.

Most frustrating is that we can see the makings of an interesting, creative film. But Kelly's thoughts pour out in a frenzied sprawl, without ever developing into a viable statement. This is especially problematic given that the ideas themselves aren't particularly original. (Republicans are power mad! Liberals can't focus their idealism long enough to make an impact!)

On the bright side, the leads do try hard to help Kelly realize his abstract vision. Gellar and Johnson have charisma to spare, though it's Scott - yes, Stifler himself - who most impresses.

"Southland Tales" does have enough energy and audacity to suggest significant potential. But was it ready for public consumption? The answer is no. It's as simple as that.

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November 14, 2007 -- A year and a half after it premiered to boos at the Cannes Film Festival, Richard Kelly's sci-fi fantasy/political satire "Southland Tales" finally detonates in US theaters on its way to DVD. If a more incoherent and self-indulgent movie has been released so far this century, I'm not aware of it.

Kelly's only previous effort, "Donnie Darko," is a model of narrative clarity and artistic discipline compared to this sprawling mess, which contains some of the worst acting and dialogue in memory.

The setting is mostly Southern California, which has become a "1984"-style police state after a 2008 terrorist attack in Texas that may or may not have disrupted the space-time continuum.

There are surveillance cameras everywhere, including restroom stalls. The Internet is controlled by a quasi-governmental agency headed by the wife (Miranda Richardson) of a senator (Holmes Osborne, who played Donnie's dad) running for president.

The narrative mostly revolves around Boxer Santaros (Dwayne Johnson, who dropped "The Rock" from his name for this project), an amnesiac action-movie star who is married to the senator's spoiled daughter (Mandy Moore).

Orbiting Santaros like so many runaway satellites are his mistress, a porn star turned TV pundit (Sarah Michelle Gellar); an LAPD cop and his twin brother, an Iraq war veteran (both played by Seann William Scott); and the leader of a band of "Neo-Marxist" rebels (Amy Poehler).

The huge cast also includes Zelda Rubinstein (the height-challenged medium from "Poltergeist"), John Larroquette, Kevin Smith - and Justin Timberlake, as another Iraq veteran who lip-syncs a production number and provides intermittent, unhelpful narration.

Many of these performers are (understandably) hiding behind extensive wigs and makeup. The most grotesque and unrecognizable is Wallace Shawn, cast as a German baron who unveils his alternate energy source at a party in a dirigible over Los Angeles.

Normally, I'd cut a little slack to any movie that quotes something as obscure as Cecil B. DeMille's musical "Madam Satan," as well as scores of better-known movies, from "The Manchurian Candidate" to "Duck Soup."

But spending $12 and 2½ hours (30 minutes less than the Cannes cut) on something as aggressively bad as "Southland Tales" is not something I can recommend with a clear conscience.

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SOUTHLAND TALES
Apocalypse No.
Running time: 145 minutes. Rated R (profanity, violence, sex, drugs). At the Empire, the Angelika, the First and 62nd.

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Click on link below for video trailer of movie:

'Southland Tales'

Rating:

BY JAN STUART | [email protected]

November 14, 2007

In this era of franchise cash cows such as Harry Potter and "Pirates of the Caribbean," a body can grow very nostalgic for the '70s, a decade when there were still studio executives crazy enough to bankroll the risque fancies of Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman and Francis Ford Coppola in their visionary prime.

The '70s also gave us the birth of Richard Kelly, the crackpot wunderkind who made "Donnie Darko" a clarion call for disaffected post-9/11 gen X'ers. Not one to buckle under second-movie blues, Kelly has succeeded in putting a daffy and deranged apocalyptic fantasia called "Southland Tales" before an expectant public, despite the over-our-dead-bodies catcalls of Cannes Film Festival cognescenti who all but chased him out of town.

What can you say about a comedy that begins with a nuclear attack on Abilene, Texas, has a deer-in-the headlights Dwayne Johnson (the actor formerly known as The Rock) as an amnesiac actor with two degrees (or bedrooms, more precisely) of separation from the next Republican presidential candidate, and features Sarah Michelle Gellar as host of a "The View"-redolent program for porn actresses who give good discussion?