It's seems like it has been such a long time since I saw a real Grade A piece of shit starring big name stars. I mean a real piece of shit, not just your typical Hollywood lameness. If Peter Jackson had went for an R rating and show the humongus piles of ape dung that would have been near King Kong's lair in his recent blockbuster, then we might have a cinematic equivalent with which to compare this ungodly mess. Imagine Jackson's creation after eating a boatload of Ex-Lax and you'll have a pretty good idea of what I think of "The King."

I really want to tell you the plot of this film because it is so far over-the- top that Six Flags is thinking of basing a rollercoaster ride on the plot points here. Gael Garcia Bernal (using a perfect accent) plays a young Mexican-American man who gets out of the navy and comes to Texas (Corpus Christi is mentioned but Austin, where the film is shot, is never mentioned). Bernal's "Elvis" (no shit - his character's name here is Elvis Perez - now you know this film is dung) find David Sandow, a modern preacher played by William Hurt who uses rock music, played by his son (the increasingly hot Paul Franklin Dano), to relate to his congregation.

We figure out pretty quickly through some somewhat well-written dialogue that Elvis is the reverend's bastard son, and we assume we are in for a pretty typical ride where a religious man struggles to hide an indiscretion from his past before he learns to accept it, admit it and realize he is a better man for being honest. But oh fucking no - "The King" has much more amazing things in store for us and all of them are so absurd, dishonest, contrived and ridiculous that I even if I had a new Thesaurus I couldn't come up with enough words to describe how insanely bad this film is. Hell, even Roget himself couldn't even begin to do it!

I can't resist. I've tried but I can't. Don't read on unless you like a lot of spoilers!

Elvis seduces the preacher's teenage daughter. This might work if she were shown to be a promiscuous slut who disobeyed her father and rebelled secretly against him (like Reverend Lovejoy's daughter on that episode of "The Simpsons"), but she isn't like that. She's a good wholesome teen. And Bernal is certainly hot as fuck and could seduce the pants off of Mother Teresa, but the script here and his lackluster performance (he knows he is in a piece of shit) does not do anything to help us believe he could seduce this girl. He's driving a beat up old car and wearing a pizza delivery boy shirt for Christ fucking sakes. It's pretty silly.

Then the film gets even more unbelievable when Dano finds out that his sister is sleeping with Bernal and goes to his shabby little motel room, like a dumbass, to tell him to stay away from her and Bernal takes a steak knife and stabs him. Bernal is supposed to sort of be doing this out of some emotion and not premeditation but nothing in her persona and nothing in his blank lackluster performance makes us believe he is capable of such an act. And, of course, I was hoping he would seduce Dano too. Now that's a plot point I could get behind. Bernal seducing his half-sister and half-brother. Fuck! Now that's a movie!

Then - are you even believing this shit up to this point? It gets even more ludicrous - after dumping the body and burning the kid's clothes and returning his car to his house, Bernal tells the sister that he has killed the brother. And she does nothing! NOTHING! What the fuck is that all about? Teenage girls ought to riot in the streets outside theaters that are stupid enough to show this piece of shit. Again, nothing in this girl's written character nor in the young actress' lackluster performance leads us to believe she is this.. this... stupid? If she's supposed to be under the spell of Bernal's amazing lust then for God's sake show us a sex scene between the two that would lead us to believe this. This horrible young actress can't even feign consciousness when Bernal simulates eating her out in the worst sex scene I've seen since Marky Mark finger Reese Witherspoon (or was it Kirsten Dunst?) on the rollercoaster in "Fear."

Oh - it gets better! Then the girl tells Bernal she is pregnant and he tells her, "We can have it." Then, in another plot twist straight out of a psycho- ward patient's imagination (I am convinced someone Schizophrenic with a 4th grade education wrote this dreck) Hurt, who has accepted the disappearance of his son after son attempt to locate him, takes Bernal under his wing and then all of a sudden announces to his congregation that Bernal is his son. The sister, who has kept her relationship with Bernal a secret from her family of course, finds out in front of a whole congregation at her father's church that she is pregnant with her half-brother's child. The unintentional laughter that greeted this scene at the screening of the film that I attended at SXSW in March of 2006 was so loud I thought the balcony was going to shake loose from its supports and fall on all of our heads. That's right - This film is so bad it actually made me fear for my life!

And then there's the end. As if what had happened up until now was even remotely feasible, Bernal has moved into Dano's vacant room and the daughter finally tells the mom what is happening and they look up and Bernal is watching them from his bedroom window. There's a long boring sequence with Hurt counting the church collection box and then we return to the house where a long tracking shot rambles through every empty room in the place in a sequence that is suppose to be suspenseful but is actually the kind of bad filmmaking that hasn't graced the silver screen since at least 1959, until we find Bernal (who has had his navy rifle with him through the entire film) putting the wounded mother and daughter in a bed, dousing it with gasoline, and lighting it on fire.

The final scene finds Bernal entering the church and going up to Hurt as sirens blare in the background and announcing, "I need to get right with God."

And that's the fucking end. It's so bad it might actually age you two or three years just to sit through it. This crap isn't even so bad as to be good. It's not trashy campy fun even though the screening I attended was riddled with unintentional laughter at many moments in the film.

Director and screenwriter James Marsh is best known for making documentaries. It is evident after enduring all 105 minutes of "The King" that the man desperately needed a break from reality. "The King" zooms into the realm of the ridiculous faster than Elvis could eat a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich, quicker than it takes to read the verse in the bible that "Jesus wept." Imagine the tears he would cry if he had to sit through this laborious and preposterous film.

Note:

Also with Pell James and Laura Herring.

Dano plays guitar and sings here - or at least feigns doing so.

Viewed at SXSW in March of 2006. Comments on the screening and the Q&A of the filmmakers, cast and crew are on the Day 5 page of Filethirteen's SXSW coverage.

Report Card

Script: F

Acting: F

Cinematography\Lighting: A

Special Effects\Make Up: B+

Music: A+

Final Grade: F