one of Lynch's best films

Rating: 8/10 (13 January 2003)

David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive" is a movie that not only gets better upon repeated viewings, but also requires a lot of brain work on the part of whoever views it (that means YOU). The script is filled with strange incidents ('Club Silencio,' for instance) and characters (a cowboy, a dwarf with links to the underworld, and a rotting corpse hanging out behind a Hollywood restaurant), but is also filled with with small details that clue us in to the answer to Lynch's riddle. "Mulholland Drive" is a mystery in the purest sense of the word, with events and characters that overlap, and seemingly go back in time--there are no easy answers to be found, but trying to figure them out is part of the fun.
Betty (Naomi Watts, filled with the right amount of cheerful naivete and, later, despair) is a young Hollywood hopeful who encounters a car crash victim named Rita (Laura Harring), who has amnesia. In the meantime, a harried film director (Justin Theroux, of "American Psycho") is re-casting the female lead of his film, but outside forces beyond his control insist on one specific girl. That's the basic plot--Lynch's narrative structure depends on unconventional incidents/characters that are better left unsaid.
If there's a flaw to "Mulholland Drive," it's the VERY made-for-TV look of the film. Quite obviously, many scenes were intended for network TV (the film was originally going to be a series, a la "Twin Peaks") and went unchanged in the final cut of the film, which isn't necessarily a bad thing--it just cheapens the look of the film. But that's a minor complaint. For fans of Lynch...or people who just like a good mystery, "Mulholland Drive" delivers in spades. 4 stars out of 5.