Art is certainly in the eye..

Rating: Null/10 (4 January 2003)

I went to film school,saw plenty of avante garde films in my time and I acknowledge there is a place for them. Not every film is designed for every viewer, and that's certainly the case with Lynch films.
That said, I must admit that this film lost my attention early on. Something in Lynch's work fails to build the intrigue, it just comes out as just plain odd and ultimately dull. A much more effective effort would be Christopher Nolan's Memento (duly mentioned in an earlier review). Yes, the genius in Memento may have been Nolan's ability to tell the story backwards, but his story began to pay dividends with characters with whom we were interested--and I actually WANTED to see it again. By the closing of Mulholland Drive, I was just disappointed. Just like Dune, just like Blue Velvet, et al.
People that like this film may say the rest of us are simpletons, and if their brains are that big, so be it. But if there is any story to be made from this film, it certainly takes too much analyzing for this to be entertaining. And upon reading the "spoiled" translation of a previous reviewer, shouldn't I be going "oh yeah!" instead of "ho hum?" Even when it's spread out on the table, it's dull!
I love that David Lynch can make films, it's always nice to see something out there that doesn't have Jerry Bruckheimer stamped all over it, or Ben Affleck playing Jack Ryan (hee hee). But I find his films to be disjointed and unrewarding, with bad acting, sluggish pacing and soft-porn production values. To say I could do any better would be pointless, I simply wouldn't know how to make this sort of film. Can you imagine trying to explain the script to the cast and crew?
Obviously, a lot of people liked this film. If there is one thing that divides our personal tastes, it's the movies.