All Revved Up [DVD]

Amazon.com The talents of John Turturro, Lili Taylor, and Will Patton are wasted on this pointless, "quirky" film. There's a particular subgenre in American film of eccentric characters leading eccentric lives, generally written and directed by people who don't actually know anyone remotely eccentric but feel that their own lives are too ordinary to make a movie about; the result is both dull and dishonest. All Revved Up is about a teacher (Taylor) whose car breaks down and who goes to a dishonest mechanic. Meanwhile, a writer for a nature magazine (Patton) seems to be having some kind of nervous breakdown or depressive withdrawal, which is somehow related to fondling gecko lizards. A welder (Turturro) is in love with a bank teller to whom he has never spoken. There's a subplot about a car-theft ring that holds a little more interest than the shambling scenes about the main characters, but not much. The dialogue is redundant and ineffective, the editing is sluggish, and the visual style is banal. Movies like this give independent film a bad name. --Bret Fetzer