Unfortunately, they are never worth the wait.
Like Gummo and Julien Donkey-Boy, Mister Lonely is a protracted (nearly two hours) series of events that occasionally sparkle with invention but too often smack of self-indulgence.
In Paris, at a hilarious, shot for real retirement home gig, Michael Jackson (Y Tu Mama Tambien’s Luna) meets Marilyn Monroe (Samantha Morton), a fellow impersonator who persuades him to join her at a stately home in the Scottish Highlands.
There he meets her husband and daughter, Charlie Chaplin and Shirley Temple, and other impersonators including James Dean, Abe Lincoln, Pope John Paul II (James Fox) and Queen Elizabeth II (Anita Pallenberg, not Helen Mirren).
Their idyll is first disturbed by a disease which kills the sheep, and as they plan a vaudeville revue promised to be The Greatest Show on Earth, Chaplin’s paranoia threatens his relationship with Marilyn.
Meanwhile, in a far off jungle a missionary priest (Grizzly Man director Werner Herzog) discovers his nuns can survive falls from his light aircraft through power of faith.
The jungle sequences bear no relevance to the impersonator story, and the film would have been tighter without them. But, then it would have lost its extraordinary moments – sky-diving nuns, a free-falling, BMX-riding sister of mercy, and comedy genius Herzog giving marriage advice to the natives.
The creepy, tiresome commune sequences need this light relief. Some of the stunt casting works – reuniting Performance’s Fox and Pallenberg – but Mister Lonely long outstays its welcome.
Eight years before another Harmony Korine film is not a bad prospect.
Rob Daniel
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