Review of Sugar Town (1999) by Mike B — 07 Apr 2004

[font=Arial]I'll sit through even the worst movies, hoping to find some redeeming feature for having spent the time. You never know - sometimes you find a gem among the rocks, even if you have to wait for the second reel.

Sugar Town could have been an epic, several reels long, and I don't think I could possibly have found anything that would find me recommending this to even the most tasteless moviegoer.

The characters are empty; there's not a single person for whom you care, or in whose plight you can even feel the slightest interest. You know almost nothing about anyone's past, less about their present, and by the end you almost hope they have no future. If the word 'asympathy' doesn't exist, it ought to be coined for this movie alone.

The plot is simple. So simple, in fact, it escaped me entirely. What was I supposed to be seeing? What was the point of all of this? Did the stars agree to make this movie as a favour for someone to whom they were all deeply indebted?

Did he sleep with the Spanish singer? Did he stay clean? Did she find success with the stolen music? Did she ever find love? Did he accept his responsibility as a father? Did she forgive his marital transgression? When did they find the body? Did the band ever make it anywhere? Did he stay with the wealthy music patron?

These questions, each of which concerns a SINGLE main character in the movie, were never answered. The credits rolled, and I had no idea what I'd just witnessed. A litter of feral kittens was let loose in the threads of this story, and there were loose ends everywhere.

I have never seen "Magnolia', but from what I understand the makers of THAT film were able to bring several seemingly disconnected stories together into a sensible ending. In Sugar Town, the seemingly disconnected stories were (oddly enough) no more connected at the END of the movie than they were twenty minutes before the movie began.

If you have to choose between watching Sugar Town, or watching a rerun of Fox's 'When Good Milk Goes Bad', choose neither.

Seriously.[/font].