Yet, as writer-director Tom DiCillo shows in his quirky and funny new film, it's not a terminal condition.
People survive their own idiocy, though there are inevitably victims along the way.
DiCillo, who wrote and directed last year's engagingly offbeat Box of Moonlight and 1995's hilarious Living in Oblivion , expands his purview from smaller, more contained films. Here, he tells a sprawling and interconnected story about the difference between what people think they want and what they really need. He has peopled his screenplay with a half-dozen characters who go chasing after ridiculous dreams when, as Dorothy observed, their heart's desire was right there in their own back yard. He affects a snobbish attitude toward working on a soap, then desperately agrees to a one-day job in a Madonna video. Mary feels powerless in her life, particularly because an old wino routinely makes suggestive remarks to her everyday on her way to work.