Good idea lost in the noise

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

If you saw this film when it came out, the cultural atmosphere would have no nostalgic impact on you, even if you lived in L.A., because it was obviously present day for you.Which brings us to the main thing that so many of us like about the movie. We like to take in the clothes, cars, landscapes and musical vibe of a bygone era; one which we may have lived for and now long for. For younger people, there may be a fascination for the way part of the world was before they were born.I was there in L.A. at that time. As a very wide-eyed and impressionable teenybobber, I was standing in the background watching the grown ups and the older kids living out their 70s lifestyle. I was just a tad too young to join. My favorite line in the film is "Daydreams and Traffic," uttered by Keith Carradine, repeating what his blonde real estate agent said L.A. is all about. I totally agree with that vibe. It's addictive in an odd sort of way.Character development is vitally important to a film, and this one is short on it. For me, at some point, a character has to explain why they are the way there are. Or at least it must come out in related dialogue. It didn't here for the most part.I say "for the most part," because we do at least see through couplings and facial expressions, and monlogues, that they are lonely people who are not getting the love and devotion they had hoped for from their life partners and families.Yes, these are mostly shallow,self-indulgent losers, who characterize the worst aspects of their era and area. But it's o.k. to tell a story about losers, if they are the types you are familiar with. Like another reviewer, I too give the makers credit for not including movie people. That would be too easy and too clichéd.I loved the Richard Baskin music. His slightly off-key delivery made it better than it would be if it were perfect. Songwriters are not necessarily supposed to be great singers. They sing their own stuff with true feeling however, since they know the ethos behind the music better than anyone else. Of course in this movie, maybe the Keith Carradine character was supposed to have written the music.The nudity did nothing for me. The context was not sexy. I'm not a big fan of big boobs on a super skinny body. I like proportion.Even though I am a conservative person, I do often wish I could have lived as an adult during a period when everyone was open to one night stands. I love the idea of bonding with a waitress and enjoying an evening together with no strings. I know that makes me a bit of a hypocrite.I guess I envied the Carradine character's unearned millions, his cool house, his talent, and his ability to bed whomever he chose, whenever he chose. Enough said.

"Welcome To LA" is a dated film involving ten characters whose only shared trait seems to be loneliness. The movie plays like a moody tone poem, and there are no comedic, dramatic, or action-filled sequences... just a bunch of urban sun-bums looking lost and hopelessly mellow.Keith Carradine redefines the term "slacker" for the Me Generation, as he wanders around LA with a soul patch having intercourse with a score of women while never once changing his expression. He's supposedly an artist, with troubles in his romantic life and familial relationships, but he is so centered, so serene, so placid, that he comes off more as a Buddhist monk or Jedi Knight.He has occasional flashbacks to his former lover played by Diahnne Abbott, and I have to believe that no man would ever forget this woman. In her wordless seconds of screen time here, just like her tiny roles in "Taxi Driver" and "New York, New York," you can see that this is one of the most gorgeous, sexual women ever to walk the Earth... she's got the jungle in her, and this is the type of woman men kill other men to be with. She was my favorite part of the movie.Between stories involving the grating Geraldine Chaplin and the sexy Sally Kellerman we keep cutting back to Richard Baskin as a singer/songwriter recording his album in a studio. These songs and the montages cut around them- which were presumably meant to be the heart of the film- are rendered unlistenable by the foul, nails-on-blackboard voice of Baskin. The fact that this man was ever allowed behind a microphone is a crime against the eardrum. Instead of the soulful, contemplative center of the story, we get a talentless drone warbling clichéd lyrics while the leads bemoan their fate. Nothing makes the heart ache like sunshine.The only other bright spot is Sissy Spacek, a woman of unbelievable beauty and depth, who effortlessly steals the show whenever she's on screen. Ms. Spacek can be a naive little girl one minute, an intellectual adult the next, and a lusty sexpot only seconds later. If you love her like I do check out "Violets Are Blue" in which she plays a woman so irresistible you cannot help but fall in love."Welcome To LA" is supposed to show the isolation and loneliness that exists even in the hedonistic, superficial world of La-La Land... the trouble is we wind up with a movie that confirms our worst beliefs about the place: These characters have no right to be this bummed... it's shallow, narcissistic self-pity. But it makes for a great late-night movie. Grade: C

In one of the first experiments with digital photography, the head of Geraldine Chaplin was digitally positioned on the body of a model ( a former Penthouse Pet) for her nude scene to avoid embarrassing her father (Charlie Chaplin) prior to his demise. Although she was anxious to perform in the nude, director Alan Rudolph feared the loss of financing if Lion's Gate Films and producer Robert Altman fell into disfavor with the World Famous Film Icon. Ultimately, Geraldine Chaplin performed the scene in a nude body stocking and it took almost an entire month, using antiquated production equipment, to digitally transfer the nude body to the head of Chaplin. In turn, this put the production way overbudget and as a result, John Wayne was replaced by Denver Pyle as the father of Keith Carradine.

I cannot begin to explain how terrible this movie is. The characters are all to a person lobotomized caricatures of some race of extinct humans no museum will ever display, and the sordid storylines weren't any of them, worth telling. Among its many plain vanilla amateurish mistakes and misfires, there is in this film, a classic example of cinematic badness. I believe it would be considered the climax? Maybe I'm wrong. Anyway, music and musicians are sort of important to the `plot'. Carradine is frustrated, over luded songwriter. Of course the soundtrack and incidental music is so unbelievably bad, and inappropriate, that it was slowly grating my nerves to Romano cheese. Here's the bad part, roughly 3/4 of the way through, a bunch of the characters who are sort of interrelated, come together at a recording session, to hear this guy who aint really in the movie other than this scene, record a tune. You are then assaulted with this incredibly bad, I mean like Gong show bad singer, who belts out a 10 minute tune that Joni Mitchell might throw together if you struck her in the head with a leaded croquet mallet. But just the whole scene, the director doing these montages, spliced with the people grooving away to this sad example of musical mediocrity, in the studio really made me want to break something. In fact, I have to see it again, just to relive that intense emotion. The 70s have always seemed to me in many ways just a huge embarrassment for humanity, especially this nation. I watch a movie like this and those thoughts are totally reinforced. You like Sissy Spacek? I never really did, but she walks through a scene topless, and its pretty doggone good.