Grade: C-

Verdict: These stories aren't worth telling or watching.

Details: Starring Selma Blair, Robert Wisdom, Paul Giamatti and John Goodman. Directed by Todd Solondz. Rated R for sex, sexual violence and language. One hour and 23 minutes.

Rate it: Write your own review

Review: Those who know the work of filmmaker Todd Solondz may be surprised by his third film, "Storytelling." It's not nearly as offensive as "Happiness" or "Welcome to the Dollhouse."

Solondz typically specializes in venomously comic observations about American culture made from the point of view of a disaffected geek (Sorta like Thora Birch in "Ghost World"). He likes to challenge and upset. And shock.

The shock here is that Solondz's two-part film is shocking only in that it reveals the filmmaker's bottomless pit of self-absorption.

The first part, "Fiction," takes on that icon of the college campus, the creative-writing class. Well, someone had to expose them for what they are — sophomoric, savage and somewhat pathetic forums for a clammy mix of pitiful confessions and scathing peer criticism.

But I don't think that's all he's trying to tell us. This jot of a half-hour focuses on a day or two in the life of Vi (Selma Blair), a generic college coed circa 1985. She and her boyfriend Marcus (Leo Fitzpatrick) who has cerebral palsy, are enrolled in a creative-writing seminar taught by the imposing Mr. Scott (Robert Wisdom). He's an African-American Pulitzer-Prize winner (his book is called "A Sunday Lynching"), given to turtlenecks and withering scorn for the efforts of his puppy-ish pupils.

Mind you, he has lots of help. In the feeding frenzy that routinely follows someone's short story, there are always students willing to grind their colleagues into the dirt. Marcus' maudlin but heartfelt I'm-challenged-and-I'm-proud treatise is dismissed as "riding a on a wave of cliches." Or derivative of Faulkner, "only East Coast and disabled."

Later, Vi's account of an appalling rough-sex liaison with Mr. Scott — one she willingly participated in — is rejected by the class as "racist, offensive, phallo-centric, weirdly feminist" and full of " 'Mandingo' cliches."

Mr. Scott merely backhands it as fiction.

Is he right? Is everything fiction as soon as we write it down, whether it happened or not?

More to the point, do we really care? Perhaps in another context, but as presented by Solondz, it's easier to wonder about the bright red square that covers the ugly, semi-rape lovemaking. Is it Solondz's anti-censorship statement or a paean to "Austin Powers?"

In the longer and slightly better "Non-Fiction," a 30-ish schlub named Toby (Paul Giamatti), decides it's time to quit his job at Florsheim Shoes and finally pursue his dream of becoming a documentary filmmaker. Choosing teens in suburbia as his theme — sorta, kinda, exactly like Solendz's previous movies — Toby hones in on Scooby Livingston (Mark Webber), an aimless high school senior whose career goal is "to maybe be on TV." When Toby approaches him about his project, his first question is, "Do you have connections?"

Thus Toby is invited into Scooby's upper-middle class family — overbearing Dad (John Goodman), wilting mom (Julie Hagerty) and their younger son (Jonathan Osser) who loves to sing show tunes.

In other words, it's the sort of parody that was funnier and fresher when Albert Brooks did it over 20 years ago and called it "Real Life."

Solondz is trying to tell us that, yes, everything is subjective. But he poses questions rather than answer them. The irony is, his movie veers into into total subjectivity. We realize that his disdain isn't for the silly Livingstons (though everything about them is underlined and made fun of) or Scott's hapless class; it's directed at his audience.

"Storytelling" assumes that everyone on the North Amercan continent saw his earlier films and either A) slapped them around unconscionably or B) foolishly fell for them. It's as if he can't decide who to hate more: the reviewers who loved him or the reviewers who hated him. We find ourselves being asked to watch The Story of Todd Solondz — what he thinks....about himself.

Where he goes wrong is in assuming our investment, intellectual or emotional, in a film that just doesn't have that much impact. So when we realize we're being "chastised," our major reaction is a kind of "Huh?" Ultimately, we simply aren't as confounded and enthralled by Solondz's career as he is. Thus, this queasily self-referential movie with its sideswipes at things like exploitation and PC complacency, evaporates before the closing credits. Solondz has already got a couple of attention-grabbing movies under his belt; now he needs to get a life.

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution