Letterboxd — Your life in film

I've always meant to watch this, but I never seemed to have the opportunity. I love Samuel L Jackson, and he's very cool in this.

The weird thing is that I had this creepy sense of déjà vu all the way through, and my wife kept looking up from her knitting and saying "I think I've seen this before". When I pointed out Busta Rhymes as the awful comedy sidekick, she said "We've had this conversation before", and I suddenly clicked that she was indeed correct. This movie is, apparently, extremely forgettable. I wonder if I'll ever see it again for the first time?

Christian Bale is fantastically hateable as the privileged white guy. Worth a watch just for his performance.

Also, the amazing soundtrack. It's like having sex in your ears. Perhaps that's the reason I forgot about watching the film?

This is quite the mash-up. There are elements of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, although the buddy motif doesn't gel as strongly. It goes a bit Donny Darko in the middle too, but with a better sense of closure. There's a good deal of Army of Darkness, but where Bruce Campbell is phenomenal, this team is merely good.

David Cronenberg seems to have been an influence too - there are strong shades of Naked Lunch, Existenz and The Fly. Some great drug scenes, and brilliantly trippy alternate reality vs. insanity themes.

I really enjoyed the first 30 minutes, and after that I just fell totally in love with the weirdness. At the half-way mark, I was ready to call this the slacker comedy of the year. Then it went all Buckaroo Banzai.

When I said to my wife "I think this movie's lost its way...", she looked at me as if I were mental - "It never had a way!". She may be right.