Now that a trailer for Evan Glodell’s Bellflower (Oscilloscope Laboratoreies, 8.5) is finally out, I’m reminding everyone to be extremely wary of too-cool-for-school critics (i.e., effetes who are so brainy and perceptive that they’ve levitated off the planet) who’ve praised it to the heavens. Because it is HE’s humble opinion that Bellflower is one of the emptiest and wankiest time-wasters ever made.
“I saw Bellflower almost two months ago at Sundance,” I wrote during SXSW, “and my general reaction was split between pique, boredom and watch-checking agony. There’s nothing going on in this film of any interest or intrigue whatsoever…nothing.
“It’s a portrait of backwater hell and grungeballs and lackadaisical scrotum-scratching. No story tension, a handmade flamethrower, no pizazz, no humor (or at least not the kind I was able to laugh or even smirk at), crappy-looking photography, no job or vision or income, godawful wardrobes, no rooting interest, no emotional involvement.
“It farts out a stunningly lame story about two low-rent 30something guys nursing some asinine notion of a coming apocalypse and one of them, a slacker beardo played by Glodell, getting lucky with a nice girl and beginning some kind of serious relationship and then the ex-boyfriend wheedles his way back in, etc.
“MSN’s James Rocchi has called Bellflower “one of the most strong and stylish critiques of the idiocy and confusion in young manhood since Fight Club” — not a chance.”