American Zoetrope
I can’t smoke pot at home anymore because… well, no real reason. But I do it at the movies instead! I was kind of looking forward to Roman Coppola’s A Glimpse Into The Mind Of Charles Swan III. The trailers were goofy, visually inventive fantasias of collage and lunacy, and the cast is really interesting. Plus it takes a ton of balls to give Charlie Sheen the lead role in your movie post-meltdown.
Unfortunately, it kind of sucks. And worse, it’s boring. You can deal with a lot of things watching a movie high. Plots don’t have to make sense. Characters can be paper-thin stereotypes. CGI can be cheesy as hell. But sitting through a boring movie when you’re baked is a new kind of hell.
Here’s the story, such as it is. Charles Swan III is a graphic designer who mostly does album covers. When his girlfriend discovers a naked picture of herself in a drawer filled with naked pictures of other broads, she flips out and leaves him. And then he sets off on a sort of journey through his own fantasy life as he tries to decide if he wants her back or whatever. So the frame isn’t half bad, and it works as an excuse for Coppola to meander around kitschy 1970s Americana, but there’s no dynamics to it. It just dicks around for an hour and change and then it’s done. Bill Murray shows up and Aubrey Plaza shows up and nothing really happens, but not a Seinfeld nothing, just a… nothing nothing.
I don’t expect a lot out of movies really. I want to go and have a good time and maybe get my brain messed with a little or laugh at a joke or see a hot lady. I’m a big dumb lizard like in Spider-Man but I don’t live in a sewer. So that’s why it sucks so much when a movie doesn’t even do that. Literally the only pleasures in this movie are looking at the awesome interior decoration in Swan’s bachelor pad and enjoying the nameless, characterless attractive ladies that wander through, never to be seen again. I could have stayed home for that.
Disclaimer: I fixed all of the spelling and grammar mistakes but left all the other dumb stuff in.