Problem: Write a negative movie review.

Answer: I was raised in a "very Christian" household since birth. I was saved before I saw this movie and the rest of the series and was forced to watch it in a youth group at my church. This movie was highly disturbing. I saw it when I was about 12 years old and literally had nightmares about it for years. I used to lay awake in bed and listen for the sounds of my mom's footsteps upstairs. If I didn't hear her footsteps, I would sneak upstairs to make sure she hadn't been raptured. I used to pray so hard every night for salvation because I was terrified of Jesus forgetting me. This is definitely not something I will show to my kids until they are much older, if at all. It took me years to shake the fear that this movie gave me.

Problem: Write a negative movie review.

Answer: Unless you are already familiar with the pop stars who star in this film, save yourself the time and stop reading this review after you've reached the end of the next sentence.

FORGET YOU EVER STUMBLED UPON THIS FILM AND GO WATCH SOMETHING ELSE.

But if you insist on reading, consider:

Lame vehicle for Japanese teen idol pretty-boys featuring nonsensical, convoluted "plot" that drags out for an insufferable amount of time until you're ready to scream.

Nothing in this film makes sense. It's an endless series of people expressing various emotions, from joy to anger, from happiness to tragedy, FOR NO GOOD REASON. We can obviously see something incredibly "dramatic" is happening, but we just don't GIVE A CRAP WHY 'cause there's no backstory.

By the time this film is over, you will be sick and tired of these stupid, lanky, girly stars' faces. You'll be revolted at having spent all this time watching them smile, sneer, cry, look mysterious, be "serious," and any other pointless expression they slap on their faces.

That some moron would ever go so far as to refer to this piece of insipid trash as being the "soul" of any of its "actors" should prove to you beyond the shadow of a doubt what the trailer and countless adoring comments on this site will not tell you:

Only the "converted," mindless minions will like this film, the majority of them teenage girls with a pathological adoration for anything androgynous. Freud would have a field day.

Unless you're one of these mindless "fans," stay the hell away from this abomination.

Problem: Write a negative movie review.

Answer: I'm not going to comb over TLPS's obvious peterbogdanovichian flaws. Instead, I shall take a look at the positive aspects of this overrated celluloid pygmy of a film.

1. Peter Bogdanovich managed to make a movie that can be endured in its entirety. This fact alone places the movie high up above and all the way up to the top of his lame filmography.

2. Bogdanovich had shown how amazingly generous some lucky boyfriends can be, by sharing Cybill Shepherd's (his then-gal) fabulous body and breasts with his male audience - and not just on one but on two occasions. Brava! The unquestionable highlights of this cinematic festa del siesta.

3. TLPS has barely a scene without stereotypical country music doodling in the background. (Peter tried to make the obvious point that the movie is set in America's Deep South (as if it weren't bleedin' obvious) so he hammered that point on and on and on...) How is this an advantage, you might ask? Well, when the movie finally ends and the monotonous country music finally ceases massaging your tired ear-drums, you start experiencing a strange exhilaration: "The movie's finally over!" It's pure joy.

4. The movie gives all women who look like Cloris Leachman hope. Hope that they, too, may one day snatch a much younger and maybe even good-looking boyfriend.

5. Cloris Leachman's biography (which I realize isn't technically a part of TLPS) gives hope to all women that look like that, that they too may one day win a Miss Chicago beauty pageant. (Provided they have enough money to bribe the jury with.)

(You think I'm joking abut Cloris having won a beauty pageant, huh? Well, check out her bio and then we'll see who laughs last...)

6. The movie was shot in black and white which spared us the sight of Cloris Leachman's face in its original, natural non-glory.

Problem: Write a negative movie review.

Answer:
This a fascinatingly awful movie. It make so little sense that it starts to make a kind of weird internal logic of its own. Well, it would if it didn't keep darting off up side-alleys until eventually floundering under the weight of its own indecisiveness. The movie can't make up its mind whether it is a straight forward 'Man Turns Into Monster' flick (like all those 1950s 'THE INCREDIBLE insert verb ING MAN' movies), or a ghastly big business conspiracy theory movie, or a mystical afterlife contact story, or... or what? Take your pick. It's just a mess. Grotesquely over the top and firing off in all directions, leaving loose ends flapping all over the place. It was as if Tobe Hooper had been taking David Lynch pills. Unfortunately he didn't take enough.