Trees Lounge

Bomb Rating: 

"Trees Lounge" is deadly dull, uninspiring, slowly paced and has a plotthat can be simply described as "man discovers something about himself."

To think I had some respect for Steve Buscemi.

Let's face it, the guy is like the acting Buddha of independent film. He's been in three of the Coen brothers' films ("Miller's Crossing," "Barton Fink" and "Fargo"), Tarantino's "Reservoir Dogs," Tom DeCillo's "Living in Oblivion," Robert Rodriguez's "Desperado" and Jim Jarmusch's "Mystery Train." You'd think he'd glean some insights from these people -- retaining their best secrets and discarding their worst.

Unfortunately, Steve's done exactly the opposite in telling the story of a 31-year-old unemployed bar patron, Tommy Basilio (Buscemi). "Trees Lounge" is deadly dull, uninspiring, slowly paced and has a plot that can be simply described as "man discovers something about himself." Sadly, Steve would have been better off making the plot "man discovers third foot growing out of rectum" for all the interest produced by Tom's self-discovery quest.

What Tom discovers is that he's an utter loser. He's also a complete moron because it takes him two hours to figure out that he's an utter loser. Let me save everybody some time here: If you spend most of your life in a bar, have no friends, no job and run around looking for 17-year-olds (Chloe Sevigny) to screw, you're probably a loser. Although if you're looking for 13-year-olds, you might not be a loser -- you might be Roman Polanski.

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