Kill Your Darlings
John Laroquette, Lolita Davidovich, Alexander Skarsgard
Directed by Bjorne Larson
Peace Arch Entertainment 2008
94 minutes
A housewife who dives in the pool with a TV set, a transvestite who tires to immolate himself, and Omar, a hitman chauffeur hired to bring them safely to their shrink’s book launch; a Swedish writer (Skarsgard) who is better at photographing hamburgers and Lola, a crazy and mysterious woman who wants to become his muse (Davidovich); they all make Kill Your Darlings a very black comedy DVD.
Toss in John Laroquette (Dan Fielding on Night Court) as Dr. Bangley, recently published author and shrink to some of these characters who is hoping to get his own TV show, and you’ve got something even stranger. Of course, all these folks are headed to Las Vegas and are bound to meet.
Unfortunately, Kill Your Darlings doesn’t work.
Omar and the suicidals get carjacked for some reason, the writer and Lola take their sweet time to get to Vegas, and something is going on with the shrink’s daughter.
A third of the movie introduces the characters and gets the story going and the next two thirds just add weird event on top of weird event though you never quite know why.
I usually enjoy weird comedies but not when they are weird just to be weird.
The movie does hint at self-reference first at the beginning with Bangley’s colleague asking is it the journey that makes the destination or is it the other way around, and then especially with Lola referring to the writer’s screenwriting book, but you never quite know why.
Had it given the viewer some kind of thread to get or keep the ball rolling this dark comedy might have worked.
As you never know quite what is going on or why it is happening you never get past the feeling this is just a strange movie that goes nowhere.
All you know is this movie is based on a novel based on a true story then made into a movie.
Oops on the last one.