Director: Terry Gilliam
Year Released: 2005
Rating: 1.0
A little girl who has the worst parents in the world (Jeff Bridges and Jennifer Tilly) and does the worst Blanche DuBois impersonation I've ever seen (topping Jonathan Caouette's pre-teen rendition in Tarnation) finds herself talking to decapitated doll heads and a retarded young man after her parents both die drug-related deaths. What sounds like a crazy hoot is anything but, as any picture that starts with its filmmaker freely admitting that a good deal of the audience will dislike the yet-to-start movie is disheartening - it somehow embodies every critique against Gilliam since The Adventures of Baron Munchausen: the camera's a tad erratic, it's over-acted, the storyline is weak and that he's overindulgent. There's something to be said about confidence in his vision, but for Terry that sometimes involves leaving the audience behind. He claims to have found his inner child - "...and it's a little girl" - but a few sessions of therapy should euthanize that delusion.
