I film I wanted to like more than I did because it had such a fun central idea - Stephen Dorff as a demented film director leading a team of oddballs who kidnap a movie star (Melanie Griffith) to appear in their film.
Dorff is fine and believable as a loony leader of the cult, who include a lot of good actors like Maggie Gyllenhall, Alicia Witt and Michael Shannon. It was probably a fun movie to work on.
It feels like a movie that needed another fe drafts of the script. Also it lacks a certain reality. Its soul is in the early 70s, when a lot more groups ran around doing kidnapping. Kidnapping doesn't feel like a late 90s thing. Neither does the whole band of outsiders or the fact they visit a drive in and a porno house.
Watching it, despite the strength of the cast, you just want Waters' old gang playing the parts - Divine, Mink Stole, Edie Massey and so on. They all felt genuinely weird. This feels like skilled actors playing weirdos which is a different thing. Alicia Witt is lovely but looks like, well, an actor playing a crazy rather than the real deal. (Dorff does have the right glint of madness.)
On a craft level, there's too many characters among the kidnappers and they all feel identical and Waters can't seem to dramatise his tale. For instance, it would seem natural to have a love triangle between Griffith, Dorff and Witt - it's all set up... but they don't go there. There's no conflict in the group, no twists and turns.
I'd love for this to be done as a musical with the story and character issues fixed because the central idea is to strong.
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