“One of the year’s best films” – Roger Ebert

“A wonderfully offbeat and original comedy” – Carina Chocano, L.A. Times

“Hilarious and heartfelt” – Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

“I loved it. So unique, so true. Not to be missed: - Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly

Wrong.

One thing we unfortunately failed to notice was that the film was Rated R for ‘Disturbing sexual content involving children and for language’. You can see where this is headed, right?

Right.

This film is worthless, super-pretentious, pseudo-arty garbage from start to finish. Any attempt to summarize the ‘plot’ would be an exercise in futility because, well, there really isn’t a linear one. Which is fine, no problem, I can handle that…except that I don’t want to see scenes of a six-year-old kid online having stuff typed at him from a fully grown woman (who later erotically kisses him) about having her finger stuck up her asshole or scat-play. There is a sleazy underage sex vibe in this film that makes it come off like an effort by some nascent female Larry Clark. And the sex offender herself is in the film as one of the main characters, a pretentious multimedia ‘artiste’ who comes across as an untalented raving nutcase. Why don’t I get the feeling this is too far from the truth? I dunno. You tell me.

You know, this is definitely one of those cases where a film starts to get a buzz by pretentious film festival fucks on the fest circuit and then people are too scared to say anything negative about it cos, well, if ole Roge ‘Heavyweight Hitter Ubercritic’ Ebert likes it it’s gotta be good, right?

Wrong.

Follow the deluded Pied Piper, ya pathetic critical sheep! This really is an awful film from start to finish. I don’t know how the hell it could be viewed as ‘hilarious’ or as a ‘comedy’ because there was no humour in it whatsoever. Early teenage blowjobs, yes, pretentious musings on fate and relationships when walking down a street, yes, convoluted interpersonal interplay, yes…but humour? Nope. Maybe I just don’t ‘get’ it, not being educated in film, except by watching them, and if I ‘got’ it it would magically reveal millions of different levels to me that would make me fall weeping to my knees in front of its grandiloquent transcendent cinematic splendor and forget my pointing out that the Emperor, here, wears no clothes and the critics who lauded it musta been smoking crack. The ‘extras’ here are a few elongated scenes of a kid sneaking out of a house to take a dump outside and some musings by kids on having two lesbian mothers amongst other pointless nonsense. Don’t see this film. Seriously. You’ll hate it if you do. Unless you’re a ‘serious’ film critic who cannot think for yourself.

Or a kiddie fiddler.

And that’s all there is to it.

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36-year-old Graham got married in August 2005 to the beautiful Ellen Lee Marshall and moved to Illinois, USA from Falkirk in Scotland. People in his new homeland tell him all the time about their Celtic ancestors. He really couldn’t much care less, but thought the same patter coming from Dennis Hopper, whom he met on the set of Land of The Dead in Toronto (in which the writer got a brief cameo as ‘Undead Journalist’ in an Oscar-worthy performance), was cool. He was told by a teenage waitress in a pizza joint that he speaks very good English. She was right. America is the third country and second continent he has lived in/on. Graham does not suffer fools at all, does not believe in intelligent design, believes all religions should be banned as being a hindrance to future further human evolution, is an obsessed wordplayboy, is wrestling with a novel he has no clear template for, still listens to punk music occasionally though he is too old for it, and is an occasional wind-up merchant because, well, it keeps life interesting.

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© 2006 Laura Hird All rights reserved.

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