Southland Tales

Southland Tales

Richard Kelly’s follow-up to "Donnie Darko" is the biggest stinker since "Battlefield Earth." Hell, at 144 minutes it’s far worse than "Battlefield Earth." That makes "Southland Tales" the lowest movie of the last nine years. Duane "The Rock" Johnson sets the film’s spastic tone with an all-time-worst-performance-from-a-human-being as he constantly taps his fingers as a tweaky amnesiac actor married to a Republican senator’s daughter (Mandy Moore). The end of the world is upon us as American fascism, terrorism, and navel-picking porn culture finds the light at the end of the tunnel in the form of a nuclear explosion. Santa Monica is political ground zero where a gaggle of slipshod characters, who have never read a book in their lives, bounce around town ducking for safety in living rooms, bars and under palm trees. Sarah Michelle Gellar plays a Britney-type porn starlet getting her media groove on as a TV host dedicated to protecting "teen horniness." The U.S. militzia are all around as Iraq war vet Ronald Traverner (Seann William Scott), and his twin Ronald, spoil for a dual. Justin Timberlake also plays a war vet, albeit with a knack for lip-syncing. There’s political satire ostensibly buried somewhere in Kelly’s muddy cinematic slop, but you’ll never be able to stain it out. Blech!

Rated R, 144 mins. (F) (Zero Stars)