Mister Lonely

If the future of American Cinema is, as Werner Herzog proudly states, Harmony Korine’s vision, then it is a tuna carcass dressed in a nun’s habit with a retarded white guy standing over it yelling obscenities. I admit to having loathed "Kids" (Harmony Korine wrote the script), I liked "Gummo" for its gothic humor, and I detested "Julien Donkey Boy" for being insidiously depressing. For "Mr. Lonely," I was just bored. Korine designs a purposefully artificial narrative contrivance with characters that are celebrity impersonators living in a rural castle in Scotland. Diego Luna is a Michael Jackson dance artist in Paris who strikes poses for money, and always dresses in costume. Michael’s already slim prospects diminish when he’s lured to an impersonators’ commune by a Marilyn Monroe lookalike (played by Samantha Morton). James Dean, Abe Lincoln, Madonna, the Three Stooges, Little Red Riding Hood, and a pockmarked Charlie Chaplin are some of the personalities Michael joins at the castle where the compound’s flock of black sheep come down with a disease that insures their necessary execution. Werner Herzog has a secondary role as a crazed Catholic priest who flies food-drop missions over Costa Rican villages, and he briefly commands the film whenever his unrelated subplot rolls around. Think of it as a cinema-of-the-infantile and you’ll be better able to stomach the utter boredom that goes along with Korine’s prepubescent logic.

Not Rated, 112 mins. (D) (One Star)