awful, pretentious, hysterically BAD, and a pointless exercise in wanking

Rating: 2/10 (5 December 2007)

What a waste of time. I nearly walked out, but chose to sit through it. I saw other people walk out though, and i can't say that I blame them. If you've seen "Don't Look Back", "No Direction Home",the 65 KQED press conference in San Francisco, and the Newport film(s) then be prepared for almost word for word attempts at recreating scenes from those films. Cate does an admirable job of imitating Dylan's mannerisms and scenes from these clips that Dylan fans already know by heart, but it all seemed such a pointless exercise. If she wasn't a woman would people be impressed at her mimicry? i doubt it. I'd much rather watch the actual clips of Dylan. i learned nothing new about Dylan from this film. In fact i laughed out loud and groaned several times at the pompous pretentiousness of the whole thing.
There were a couple good surreal moments (such as David Cross as Ginsberg in a golf cart) but that didn't compensate for the tedious recreations of Baez, Grossman etc...
Imagine an over the top student film with a larger budget that conned some big name actors into playing along. Silly, stupid and just plain BAD.
This is not a film about Dylan, this is a film about Todd Haynes. It will tell you a lot about the director and virtually nothing about the supposed subject.
If you aren't very familiar with Dylan already, you will be completely confused. If you already know about Dylan you'll probably just be shaking your head. Go watch "No Direction Home", "Don't Look Back" the 65 KQED press conference, the Newport films....to learn more about Dylan. Hell, go watch bugs bunny or read Kerouac and you will learn more about Dylan than watching this painful, almost unbearable, piece of masturbation.