Not one of Lynch's Best

Rating: 3/10 (28 June 2002)

I'm not sure it IS possible to write a spoiler for a David Lynch film! Nevertheless, I am going to refer to the film's key element, a major change in direction:
This disappointing effort by director David Lynch gives us two plotlines to choose from - a thriller about a plucky ingenue trying to solve a crime, and a story of frustrated ambition in Hollywood. It's also full of references to Stanley Kubrick's much better film, "Eyes Wide Shut".
I love David Lynch, and it would be hard for me to choose between "Eraserhead" and "Blue Velvet" for his best film. "Eraserhead" works as a disturbing fantasy, filled with multi-interpretable elements but a discernible theme of anxiety and responsibility. "Blue Velvet" works as a straightforward thriller with weird overtones. This film gestures to both, but, unable to take the thriller part seriously, leaves us with the vastly less interesting theme of frustrated-ambition, interlarded with stream-of-consciousness fantasies. It's all cross-referenced back to the first plotline, but unfortunately, THAT was the best part of the film!
Basically, I'm just not interested in sitting through 2 1/2 hours of the fantasies of a frustrated starlet. If you are, this mud's for you.