a pilot without an airplane

Rating: Null/10 (23 April 2002)

don't worry, no spoilers here.
okay, it's like this. i like david lynch. i think some of his films, like wild at heart, twin peaks (mostly season 1 and "fire walk with me"), blue velvet & the straight story are all great. and i enjoyed watching mulholland drive, with its twists & turns, eerines and metaphysical dread creeping around. but "one of the best films of the year"? someone must have been hitting the booze...
this film started as a tv series pilot, and that's exactly what it looks like. the first hour and a half are totally linear and "make sense" in the traditional sense of the term. after that, the actors and characters make a big switcheroo, and present a different take on the events we've just seen.
it's obvious this was lynch's way to wrap up the loose ends and unconnected characters, not by giving us a conventional conclusion, but by creating an intentional mishmash that could only come from the mind of lynch. it's impressive, technically, but the reasons behind it are obvious, which makes it hard to take seriously.
this can easily be compared to the twin peaks pilot. when he directed that, lynch was under obligation to deliver a version of the pilot that had an ending, so the producers would still have something to show if the series wasn't picked up. he produced a version where laura palmer's body is found, the characters are introduced, and then the killer is found, all within the space of an hour and a half. this version was released on tape in europe.
what we have here is very similar, except that instead of a formula ending, we get a berserk game of musical chairs, a bit like the stuff lynch did before in "lost highway".
if this were a pilot to an actual tv show, i'd gladly sit and watch it every week. but as a feature, it's just 2 hours of surreal, creepy fun, and nothing new if you've watched twin peaks and lost highway.