Mister Lonely

The best thing to say about Mister Lonely is that the soundtrack was awesome and the film wasn’t nearly as bad as Merry Misfits from last year. But this definitely takes the cake as this years WTF film. Written and directed by Harmony Korine, this film seems to simply be based on two ideas; nuns falling out of airplanes and a commune of impersonators. That’s all and, no, the two do not relate. If ever I needed a Q&A, it was for this and unfortunately there was none.

I feel like a watched this entire movie with my mouth open in disbelief. First of all, the main character is a Michael Jackson impersonator played by none other than Mexican actor Diego Luna. And yes, he keeps the Mexican accent. He is taken to a commune in a castle by a Marilyn Monroe impersonator and meets Charlie Chaplin, her husband, and Shirley Temple, her daughter. Also in the commune are a swearing Abe Lincoln, a vaguely Hispanic Queen of England, the Pope, and the three stooges. After admitting that her husband looks more like Adolf Hitler than Charlie Chaplin, the most disturbing moment in the movie comes when Chaplin (Hitler) rapes a sunburned Marilyn Monroe.

The nuns falling from airplanes storyline is randomly interspersed with the impersonators. The nuns like in a mission in South America and use a small airplane to drop food to nearby villages. On one of the food drops, a nun falls out of the plane, prays in midair, and lands softly on the ground. So then the priest tells all of the nuns to jump out of the plane. All land safely, a miracle is declared, and the priest and nuns are invited to Rome to meet the Pope (the real one, not the guy living in the impersonator commune). All die in a plane crash on the way to Rome.

In the end, Mister Lonely had a few bizarre but hilarious moments and never failed to shock or confuse me. I guess it was all based on “finding yourself” but I think the confusion, complexity, and utter strangeness ended up losing most of the audience members.