Review – Tideland

Terry Gilliam continues his pursuit of the perfectly unmarketable movie, this time coming darn close to his goal. The plot summary actually makes it sound like this would have been a good movie for him: an imaginative pre-teen girl is isolated in a run-down farmhouse after both her junkie parents die. She befriends a mentally-ill woman and her brain-damaged brother. I figured such a trio of reality-challenged characters would give Gilliam no end of opportunities to employ his gift for unusual visuals. To be sure, he does so from time to time. But far more prevalent is his use of a meandering script that gives the girl and her crazy companions no end of opportunities to rattle on at length about nothing in particular. Thus overall the production didn’t make much of an impression on me. It had some good moments, but finding them requires a good deal of patience. Mildly amusing