Southland Tales

“I’m a pimp, and pimps don’t commit suicide.”

Such is the reasoning of Boxer Santaros as he struggles to save the world in Richard Kelly’s “Southland Tales.” Played by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson (“The Scorpion King”), Santaros mysteriously turns up at the beginning of the film with amnesia. He’s a movie star who co-writes a screenplay (with a porn star, no less) about the end of the world as we know it. What Santaros and his co-writer don’t realize, however, is that they have unwittingly predicted the real apocalypse, set in motion by the deceleration of the earth’s rotation and a war-related accident in Iraq.

The premise behind the prediction, according to Santaros, is that “the rotation of the earth is slowing down at a rate of .00000006 miles per hour each day, disrupting the chemical equilibrium in the human brain, causing very irrational criminal behavior.” Santaros and his porn-star lover Krysta Now, played by Sarah Michelle Gellar (“Cruel Intentions”), work to put the screenplay together, but in the course of their efforts, Santaros begins to reclaim his memory and unearths a governmental plot that has the potential to destroy the earth.

People planning to see this movie should not hope for the next “Donnie Darko.” Kelly, the director of both films, appears to realize that he will not surpass his previous feat; rather, he makes allusions to his cult classic by designating the signature rabbit symbol from “Donnie Darko” as an icon for the underground Marxist movement that begins to unravel the apocalypse plot. In doing this, he acknowledges that the success of the cult is everywhere. Here, however, Kelly has more mainstream aspirations. He aims both for surrealist comedy and action slasher, although time travel does make a cameo appearance near the end of the film.

The dialogue has its moments; in one scene, Gellar says with confidence, “Scientists are saying the future is going to be far more futuristic then they originally had predicted.”

The best element of the film is its eclectic and star-studded cast. While all celebrities in their own rights, the actors adopt a pseudo-satirical style and give exaggerated performances, making no effort whatsoever to transcend their type-casting. This two-dimensional approach, however, helps Kelly create not only a send-up of today’s modern political scene but also an absurdist parody of the entire surrealist genre.

In “Southland Tales,” the Marxist underground movement is controlled by SNL-type aging hippie-feminists who wear loose-fitting clothes, carry Tazers, and do lots of drugs. The entire American voting system and all forms of media are centralized through “USIDent,” a network controlled by a tight-lipped governmental matriarch who sits and watches all the events unfold on a wall covered in monitors. Santaros spends half the film fiddling with his fingers a là Mr. Burns of “The Simpsons,” nervous as a squirrel despite his manly, muscled exterior.

Kelly preserves his confusing storytelling style by splicing between multiple plot lines. The narration is delivered by Justin Timberlake, who plays Pilot Abilene, an ex-soldier previously stationed in Iraq. Timberlake does a surprisingly good job of portraying a doped-up prophet. In one scene, he dances about an arcade with a troupe of leggy, chesty girls, and is clearly in his element in the music video-like setting. Likewise, Mandy Moore is apt at playing the marginal role of the rich girl who is spoiled by her politician father, while Seann William Scott slips seamlessly into the role of the confused pawn.

The special effects don’t go overboard, and the film has an excellent soundtrack, but it never develops any real moments of emotion. Granted, Kelly may be attempting to parody the surrealist tradition and even the frightening idea of an apocalypse, but the film lacks real depth, even in its short-lived romantic subplots. By the end, it’s easy to feel tired and harried by the explosions, Christian imagery, and garish costumes.

It’s much easier to sit back and have the film happen to you, instead of trying to piece together the characters’ fragmented stories. And at the movie’s end, when the last chance for the audience to become engaged disappears, “Southland Tales” becomes a self-involved riddle that most viewers won’t want to solve.