Take an unemployed bum and give him the price of a bottle to come up with a screenplay.

Rating: 1/10 (3 May 2005)

Actually it would be a more credible explanation for this film if you took two unemployed bums who don't know each other and never meet and neither knows they are collaborating. You would then have a string of odd characters and odd events. Mix the whole lot with some people who know how to crank a camera and spend $17 million making a movie. Call it an intellectual challenge, sit back and wait for the critics to call it a masterpiece.
To be fair there are some talented actors, camera and sound people involved in this. There are some nice clothes and in a couple of short scenes a nice lack of them. But you can see all those in a cheap weekly celebrity magazine and it won't take 2 hours and 25 minutes of your life to do it.
I have heard that Kubrick's 2001 is considered by some to be a masterpiece because no one understands the ending. I never understood it anyway, but I did like the film. It had some fabulous things going on that were understandable right up to the last 20 minutes or so. Even at the end it was interesting to look at even if completely incomprehensible. Mulholland Dr. is just not in that category.
Some arty intellectuals will say that I just didn't get it. That I am lacking in some way and that while the movie might be hard to figure out it is like a hard to figure out mathematical concept. Mathematics might be hard to understand but the fact is it can be understood. And all those who understand it will agree on what it means. In this case we have "no right answers". I have no objection to being left wondering if such and such a movie idea could really happen or, what if I were caught up in Groundhog Day or, did he/she really do it? But these are questions to do with aspects of a film not the entire "piece of work".
Did I just not get it? I don't think so. I just noticed within minutes of the opening credits that the emperor had no clothes.