I'm Not There (2007)

This movie was so bad I thought I was going to die of torturous boredom in the theater. Seriously! I even gasped outloud at the 2 hour mark "It's not over yet!!??" I even considered killing myself to avoid seeing any more of the 2 hour plus torture - my son paid for the tickets so I stayed. The acting was marvelous, the script was interesting at moments, but the story was so bad and the visuals were so lame and ridiculous it was like watching a movie your friends made for a college 101 film class - except they had professional actors - and it was unjustly long. The direction was clumsy and the camera angles were distant and lacked any input into the film. All the drama was watered down to the point of just being annoying as though the director refused to allow any true drama to leak out of the film. It left me feeling very aware that the seats in the theater were too small and my knees were cramping instead of getting lost in another reality. This director should refrain from ever making any movies ever again - or least until he graduates from film school - cause don't tell me that guy know jack about film making. That was worse than any movie I've ever had to sit through - ever and I'm going to be 50 years old soon. That's alot of movies to say that. Whatever you do, don't see this movie!!!! Not even if someone pays for your ticket!!!!

This movie has two of the best performances I have ever seen, two very good performances, one good actor working with nothing, and one absurd miscast. Cate Blanchett deserves her Oscar nomination as Dylan in his mid-60's heyday and Marcus Carl Franklin was cheated out of one as the pre-fame Dylan. That kid was incredible. Richard Gere was surprisingly good as the Country-Rock Dylan of Nashville Skyline and John Wesley Harding. In fact the character was an old Billy the Kid, and Dylan wrote the soundtrack to the movie Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. This guy I'd never heard of was very intriguing as a Dylan/Arthur Rimbaud. However Heath Ledger was given a soap opera script and Christian Bale was incredibly miscast as the protest singing Dylan. Todd Haynes makes up for this in that he is an incredibly inventive, even brilliant filmmaker. He makes six different actors playing the same real life person, but six different characters coherent and thoroughly enjoyable. Haynes and Franklin were inexcusably shut from Oscar nominations, and now Ledger is getting good reviews for his performance because he just died. But any fan of Bob Dylan or great acting or strikingly original filmmaking would love this. I'm a fan of all three.

The movie I am not there, was not there. By the end of the Movie my friend and I and one other couple were the only fourpeople left in the show. We waited and waited for something to show us this movie was worthwhile, it never happened. Who ever wrote this screen play had to be on something heavy.