Here’s a movie that I must admit goes beyond anything I ever expected in the realm of science-fiction (and not in a good way).  David Lynch is well known – as I’ve discovered in the last few weeks – for his overly stylized weirdness.  This time going into the one genre of filmmaking which requires an immense imagination he not only falls into the realm of over aloof-ness but he just misses the point of making a movie.

The point of making a film isn’t to make something that is so high brow that only you and the three special children in the theatre will think that they get it.  The point is to take the art of visual, narrative and sound a put together something that will affect me and it’s impossible to affect me if I don’t get it.

I know that I’m leaving myself open for all the stupid comments that will come about how it’s so simple.  I was with this movie for the first hour.  It set itself up like a hybrid of some RPGs and RTS games that I know of.  The film begins with trying to explain the politics of the need to control the spice which is mined from these other planets and I know that this can be taken as some metaphor for a lot of the exploitation of nations across the world for their natural resources (i.e. diamonds in Africa and oil in the Middle East).  Unfortunately, it just felt so over my (and most other’s) head that it was a waste.

I was even slightly bothered by how he introduced me to this interesting/cool action fighting system in this futuristic world when we meet the character of Gurney (Patrick Stewart) but we never really get to see much of it through the film.  Even though the final fight scene between Feyd (Sting) and Paul (Kyle MacLachlan) was pretty nicely done.

The movie just felt like it had something special and Lynch decided to hide everything that’s special about it in a plethora of overly un-understandable imagery and a clunky plot.  I never seemed to understand as to why each character was doing what they did.  I could make an intelligent guess, but films aren’t supposed to be so obscure all the while.  There are films that are obscure at points and I love, but those tend to use the lack of understanding as an opportunity to explain whether by exposition or actually showing me.  This movie on the other hand took the obscurity and rode the horse all the way home without caring what I thought of it.

It’s a film that I’ll probably never revisit because I know that if I need to sleep I can just count some sheep and I’ll eventually get there.

IMDB says 6.5/10

Rotten Tomatoes says 62%

I say 2.0/10