Strange Just To Be Strange Is Ho-Hum

Rating: 5/10 (7 September 2007)

Let's be honest. David Lynch films are cult films and cult films are popular because their cult films. It doesn't mean that they're very good film making. "Plan 9 From Outer Space"... I rest my case.
Initially, Lynch's method for generating ideas seemed to be: a) Drop acid. b) Remember your trip. c) Make a movie out of it.
Now the method seems to have changed to: a) Drop acid. b) Watch one of your own films. c) Pretend that what you saw is something new. d) Make a new movie out of it.
Granted, I am intrigued by Lynch's films, but then I have never dropped acid. Is there some connection there? Perhaps, but once you see one Lynch film then you have basically seen them all. They're all bizarre, but I suspect only for the mere sake of being bizarre. Further, Lynch has done the same "bizarre" over and over to the point that it isn't even bizarre anymore. He's become his own clichÃ©.
For me, "Mulholland Dr.", of all the Lynch films, was one of his better efforts. It did not have the snail pace of some of his others, such as "Lost Highway". Naomi Watts was excellent in her portrayal of a Hollywood hopeful who cares for a strange woman suffering from amnesia. The story floats around their relationship and their investigatory efforts to discover the woman's identity.
Just as in other Lynch films, people trade bodies, lives are threatened, devilish figures speak in riddles slowly, and women get naked. To the latter, the couple of scenes with Watts and Laura Harring getting down and Sapphoian might delight the nude-celeb groupies out there, but beyond that, they are shamefully... embarrassingly gratuitous. C'mon!