Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson rarely misses at the box office, but a 2006 flop deserves more attention than it gets. Beginning his career in professional wrestling in the mid-1990s, The Rock quickly became a superstar outside sports entertainment with his larger-than-life personality and unbelievable charisma. Hollywood came calling quickly, and after a few cameo appearances and supporting parts, The Rock was thrust into movie stardom in his first leading role in 2002’s The Scorpion King. He hasn’t looked back since, and is one of the highest-grossing actors of all time.

Though he has starred in a few well-received films, most of The Rock’s movies haven’t been popular with critics, though it is rarely his fault. Johnson proved himself to be a deft actor from the start, and his charismatic performances in the wrestling ring were only a precursor to what he could do on the big screen. He has succeeded by leaning into what he does best, and rarely plays roles that don’t accentuate his greatest qualities. However, earlier in his movie career, The Rock starred in a few films that didn’t move the needle, though they weren’t all bad.

Southland Tales Is An Intriguing, If Divisive, Movie That’s Well Worth Watching

Richard Kelly’s Dark Comedy Is One Of The Weirdest Movies Of The 2000s

H๏τ on the heels of his cult classic film, Donnie Darko, director Richard Kelly returned to the chair to deliver Southland Tales. The dystopian black comedy premiered at Cannes in mid-2006 before eventually getting a full release more than a year later. The sprawling epic takes place in an alternate near-future in which the United States plunges into WWII and becomes a hyper-nationalist dystopia. Various characters and their stories swirl around that basic concept, and the movie packs in plenty of strange sub-plots. The Rock plays an action star with amnesia who possesses a screenplay that predicts future events.

One thing that Southland Tales is not lacking is ideas, and the movie stuffs in so many little details that it’s actually one of the most fleshed-out near-future stories ever put to film. While patently absurd at every moment, the dire predictions in Southland Tales seem eerily possible. The film satirizes politics, entertainment, and American culture with a humorously sharp edge, but it’s so bombastic that it never takes itself too seriously. As Kelly proved with Donnie Darko, he’s excellent at delivering weird concepts convincingly, and Southland Tales borders on being a parody of a movie.

Richard Kelly’s films include:

Despite its glossy exterior and A-list cast including 2000s mega-stars like Sarah Michelle Gellar, Seann William Scott, and Justin Timberlake, Southland Tales is not a conventional Hollywood film. That’s what makes it such a brilliant concept, even if the film itself doesn’t always deliver on its promises. It’s big, strange, and complicated, and it was totally unlike anything that was being released at that point in the Aughts. Its mᴀssive scope and long running time made it a tough sell in 2007, but it has become an even more enjoyable viewing experience in the age of streaming.

Why Critics Didn’t Like Southland Tales In 2006

Critics Had A Lot Of Reasons To Dislike Southland Tales

After actually getting booed at Cannes, Southland Tales would get a similarly chilly response from critics when it was widely released. Roger Ebert gave the film 1 star out of 4, and generally tore the film down for being hard to understand and convoluted. He wasn’t the only person to express such sentiments, and that has generally become the legacy of the film. Ebert was one critic who understood that Richard Kelly was going for something, but was not afraid to say that he failed miserably to achieve that goal.

Outside of that, the film’s crushing length was another thing that ultimately sunk Southland Tales, and it’s difficult to keep an audience onboard with odd ideas for so long. Donnie Darko was improved by adding a few extra minutes of footage to the director’s cut, but Southland Tales only got more confusing when it was cut down after Cannes. Unfortunately, the film was constructed to be such a strange and unusual experience that it wasn’t meant to be fully comprehensible. This means a large swath of the audience wouldn’t be interested regardless of how well the film is executed.

Another reason Southland Tales didn’t sit well with viewers and critics was that it was simply too mean-spirited. The Aughts in the US were a time of shifting political dynamics, and there was plenty of great media skewering the contemporary political climate. Movies like Idiocracy allowed viewers to laugh along with the story, but Southland Tales is so strange and alienating that the jokes often come at the viewer’s expense. The possible future is just a little too realistic to be funny, and characters like The Rock‘s Boxer Santaros are almost aimed at the audience’s taste in popular culture.