Mad Cowgirl

Or, A good idea does not a good movie make. I forget where I first heard about Mad Cowgirl. I think it was a recommendation from Netflix, based on my various movie ratings through the site. That has worked for me in the past: I very much enjoyed Returner when Netflix suggested it. And the synopsis at the site sounded great:

Director Gregory Hatanaka's twisted thriller stars Sarah Lassez as Therese, a health inspector whose progressively delusional psyche leads her on a surreal -- and bloody -- odyssey. To cope with her marital split, Therese takes up with a slimy televangelist (Walter Koenig), indulges her appetites for sex and beef, and obsesses over a kung fu TV show. Meanwhile, her meat packer brother (James Duval) may have infected her with mad cow disease.

- Plot Synopsis from Netflix

Sadly, Mad Cowgirl fails utterly to deliver the entertainment promised by that quote. I have to honestly wonder if whoever wrote that even saw the movie. They got the plot elements right, the health inspector, the madness, the kung fu TV show, Walter Koenig. But they failed to mention the major defect of the film: near as I could tell, it had no real plot. It was instead simply a very disjointed collection of scenes cut together by someone with infinitely more pretension than film making talent. I'm not going to attempt to hit even the highlights, as I really have no idea what I saw. When we were able to rouse ourselves from the stupor the movie induced, [faq:dpDustin] and I discussed what was wrong with it. We determined that a good idea is not all that hard to come up with, and isn't the most important element in making a good film. You have got to be a good story teller, or the ideas are totally wasted. And Gregory Hatanaka is not. As near as we could tell, he simply filmed everything that related even tangentially to his idea, then spliced it all together, leaving none of it on the cutting room floor. Such elements as plot, story, and characterization were ignored in favor of getting his pretty images up on the big screen. To be fair, some of them were quite well done; Hatanaka clearly has skill as a cinematographer. He just has no self control, and is entirely too artsy for his own good. Anyone can come up with a good idea for a movie. I've got dozens myself. But if you can't tell a story to save your life, you're not going to wind up with a decent movie. This can be forgiven if you deliver on everything you promise. Snakes on a Plane did that beautifully. To be sure, it was pretty light in the plot department, the title pretty much telling everything, but it gave us exactly what we were looking for. Snakes, a plane, and Samuel L. Jackson. Mad Cowgirl failed in much the same way that Komodo vs. Cobra did. I could have forgiven that movie almost all of its flaws had it delivered a climactic final fight scene between two titanic reptiles. And I could have forgiven Mad Cowgirl's oppressive artsiness if it had delivered on even half of the excellent horror and gore and entertainment its description promised. Sadly, I was more bored than entertained. I had to fight to keep from dozing off during much of the movie. I never saw any plot hooks or interesting characterizations to draw me in. Consequently, it earns a mere 08. Bolls, rising that far solely on the merits of some well-shot scenes.

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