MASKED AND ANONYMOUS review

MASKED & ANONYMOUS is an exquisite work of unmitigated shit.

I sat there in the theater this morning, jaw agape, stunned at the talent hitting my windshield like bugs on a highway. Them bugs on the windshield, the guts and parts spread about that silver screen, they’re responsible for 3 Academy Awards and 18 Academy Award Nominations. This may very well be the greatest waste of talent in the history of cinema.

This isn’t just your ordinary awful film like GIGLI or BOYS & GIRLS… This film is stunningly awful. There is a new low water mark. This film is astonishing to endure.

I sat there and saw many of my favorite actors flop about gasping for anything. Dying on screen. Desperately waving their hands about, giving their characters huge voices… trying to fill the utter void of significance that sucked the souls from anything on screen or watching it.

Think of the worst Altman film, the worst Coen film, the worst Woody Allen film… then imagine that you could see a film that makes them all seem brilliant, perfect and without fault.

The astonishing bit about this film is how you can’t look away. No matter what, you’ll sit there with some grain of hope. You’ll think to yourself while watching this, “It must get better,” but like me, you’d be wrong. You’d think with Jeff Bridges, Penelope Cruz, Bob Dylan, John Goodman, Jessica Lange, Luke Wilson, Angela Bassett, Steven Bauer, Bruce Dern, Ed Harris, Val Kilmer, Cheech Marin, Chris Penn, Giovanni Ribisi, Mickey Rourke, Christian Slater, Susan Tyrrell, Tracey Walter, Fred Ward and Charlie Sexton… well… you’d think there might be a scene. A moment. A glimmer of interest. You’d be wrong.

The only interest that could possibly hold your attention throughout this disaster is the concept that it is continuing to suck. Then there’s the whole train wreck factor. Watching that above list of AMAZING actors suck… it’s astonishing. I mean… Had this film been cast with Mr.T, Hulk Hogan, Freddie Prinze Jr, Tom Neyman, Lorenzo Lamas, Kathy Ireland, Jon Lovitz, Danny Bonaduce, Jackie Mason, Corey Haim, Richard Kiel, Alyssa Milano, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Todd Bridges, Henry Winkler and special guest, The Rock… well I think that cast might’ve been able to pull this off, especially if the aging Rocker was played by Felipe Rose with the rest of his regular band as back-up. It would have been an excruciatingly hilariously awful film.

Instead, watching a cast of the talent level that was actually in this film… well, it’s like what I imagine being strapped into a theater to watch your parents home porn tapes would be like. People you love, in a way you never needed to see them.

It isn’t just the performances though… the script is ludicrous. The cinematography seems to be by an autistic boy with a huffing problem. Meandering, drifting and semi-conscious of what is going on. The editing and pacing is like a metronome at its slowest setting… back….. and….. forth…… back……. And….. forth……

This film is hypnotically shitty. Like a 22inch snaked turd in the toilet bowl, this is a keeper… Photograph, send it to Flynnt… There’s many people out there that will go see this film no matter the warnings… I did. And somehow, the film was oddly fulfilling. There’s something strangely Zen about beholding a film this awful. Something humbling. Like the works of Ed Wood, it teaches you that not just anyone can pick up a camera… but also, if you put enough wrapping paper on a turd, you can sell it to suckers everywhere. There’s comfort in that, it’d make P.T. Barnum smile I think.

I know I don't go into the plot, the story, the scenes or the minutae of this heap, but personally... I want others to suffer as I suffered watching this film with false hope and the dream of what could have been beaten like a baby seal before a crying child. I'm telling you to beware, but I know with every word you are inching closer to the theater and someday when we meet... we'll lock eyes, share the stare and say, "Masked And Anonymous?" then share a table at a coffee house and talk about how bad it can really get.