By the time the MegaZeppelin gets blown out of the sky, you realize that is absolutely the visual metaphor for this movie. I commit no spoilers in this because the destruction of the big shiny blimp of the future is completely irrelevant to what I can make out of the plot.

We’ve already seen that Richard Kelly is a deft hand with the contradictions and possiblities of time travel. I had to keep telling myself that as I watched this film; it was what kept me patient enough to slog through the incoherence, the seemingly irrelevant stunts. Well, that and the very cool imagery.

My patience was paid off—by the end of the film I’d learned to pay very close attention to little throw-away remarks so I understood what was going on in the ice cream truck and why it mattered… but I had to watch the whole thing again to piece together how it related to everything else.

So, nowhere near as good as Donnie Darko but it wasn’t really trying to be.

I’m going to hunt down a second hand copy of the prequel graphic novels and see if they help. I had a very deep feeling that Kelly was really trying to do something with all of these characters (like the Kevin Smith cameo guy who pops up out of nowhere in the last act but whom everyone treats as very important indeed) and still have that one shred of faith in him, enough to give it this last chance.

On the plus side, as I said, some very cool imagery, some very engagingly weird performances (especially Jon Lovitz and, surprise since he usually annoys me to no end, Seann William Scott) and some truly hilarious bits. I speak namely of the Justin Timberlake/The Killers music video drug trip, which made me laugh so hard I scrolled back and watched it a few times in a row.