Original Idea Can’t Carry Tale of Celebrity Fakes

By Frank Gabrenya, The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio

Jul. 4–Michael Jackson performs his dance moves for a roomful of elderly folks in a Paris nursing home.

He then meets Marilyn Monroe, who invites him to join her in the Scottish castle she shares with Abraham Lincoln, James Dean, Buckwheat, Sammy Davis Jr., Little Red Riding Hood, Queen Elizabeth II, Pope John Paul II and the Three Stooges.

Oops — I forgot to mention that Marilyn is married to Charlie Chaplin. Their daughter is Shirley Temple.

Sounds like a humdinger of a joke with a punch line you can’t possibly predict, right?

Actually, that’s the premise of Mister Lonely, a hopelessly precious movie from Harmony Korine, who got his start by writing the semi-horrifying Kids and has since directed the defiantly original art pieces Gummo and Julien Donkey-Boy.

The premise isn’t quite as preposterous as it sounds: Michael, Marilyn and the others are celebrity impersonators who can’t make much of a living at their specialties. So they’ve formed a sort of show-biz commune in the Scottish Highlands, where their plan is to build a little theater and put on gala shows for the ordinary folks in the nearby village.

While that makes more sense, it makes for a less interesting movie. If Mister Lonely matched the real Jackson with the real Monroe in a comic conceit, the results might say something about the burdens of stardom. But a group of second-rate impersonators (whose performing talents prove seriously mediocre) just leads to a

sad, sluggish drama about society’s outcasts struggling

to express themselves.

Mister Lonely seems more like a long series of acting exercises in which some dedicated players — including Diego Luna of Y Tu Mama Tambien and Samantha Morton of Minority Report — explore their characters in various moods and situations. A conventional plot is nowhere in sight.

Even the conflicts barge in from left field. The commune has a herd of sheep that come down with a disease and must be slaughtered (by the Stooges with shotguns). Chaplin abuses Monroe (his mustache is beginning to make him look more like Hitler to her). Lincoln seriously exercises his freedom of profanity, and the pope proposes that they get drunk.

Between these scenes, Korine presents an unrelated plot about a priest (filmmaker Werner Herzog) leading a group of nuns in a relief effort in some jungle locale. When one of the nuns survives a fall from an airplane because of her devotion, a startling and more provocative issue is introduced, then immediately ignored for the soap opera of the celebrity fakes.

In the end, being an impersonator is found to be a sad endeavor without reward. We are supposed to be moved by the shattering of innocence, but the movie hasn’t made clear whose fault any of this is. It expects us to side with the proud counterfeits, but they aren’t very interesting and are too self-absorbed to root for.

If we rate films strictly on the basis of originality, Mister Lonely easily separates from the field. It has a few striking visuals between many slow scenes but not enough edge to be avant-garde and too little traction to convince us that anything of import is going on.

fgabrenya@dispatch.com

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