Dune (1984)

Ah fuck, is it time to talk about Dune now? (Side note: As a reaction against being denied press status to IFF Boston, despite getting it last year, I've decided to cuss more often around here. Yeah. Shit.) I'd been warned against David Lynch's ill-fated adaptation of Frank Herbert's notoriously complex, influential sci-fi novel (which I haven't read), but its position on the sci-fi list and my own gross curiosity finally led to a viewing. Set in a distant future or an alternate universe or something, Dune concerns the political schemings and drug wars of two powerful clans, each in charge of a planet fiefdom under the emperor. The Atreides family takes over the desert planet Arrakis, valuable because it is the only place to find "spice", a mind-altering substance that essentially powers all society with its many uses.

The family's rivals the Harkonnen invade Arrakis, wanting to control the production of spice for themselves. Paul Atreides (Kyle MacLachlan), the son of the Atreides leader, escapes their attack and spends years in the desert with the Arrakis native people known as Fremen, gaining increased mental powers from spice and fulfilling a prophecy for a superbeing who would lead them to freedom. The emperor gets in on the action, as does a group of witchy magic ladies. Oh, and Sting's there.

Jesus christ what the hell is happening here? I can't even... Ok. To begin with, I'm not the biggest David Lynch supporter, essentially because Blue Velvet freaked me the fuck out in high school (I liked Mulholland Drive, though). With Dune, he takes a lot of his self-indulgent, convoluted storytelling tendencies and applies them to an already complicated narrative, all while making it ridiculously campy and nonsensical.

For the most part, this movie is just a complete mess. The story is all over the place, most of the characters are flat and undeveloped, the effects aren't quite up to Lynch's vision, the whole set up is super patriarchal, half the characters are unnecessary, and it's too damned long. Also, here is a director who can't really shoot action scenes in an interesting manner. Miles wisely advised me to read the wikipedia article about the book, so I'd have some grounding, and thank goodness I did since there isn't much effective explanation of anything. A huge amount of information had to be condensed into one film, which seems like a stupid idea to me. I guess that's why they later made it a miniseries.

Of course, it does have its entertaining moments. The large amount of repetitive thought narration is continually hilarious, and does not help explain the story better, as I imagine was the intention. The acting is pretty bad, but I do really enjoy Kyle MacLachlan in anything, and I appreciated that Sting barely had any lines but did get to wear completely awesome underwear (although his nipples seem weirdly small). There are some cool sets and costumes, and I dug the sandworms.

I'm not even sure what to think of Dune. It's not very good. But I can't say I hated it. I suppose it's mostly just sort of funny, and awfully misadvised; this makes it persistently watchable, like some sort of horrific train wreck with bouncy balls or something. Also it led to this joke that I helped with.

2/5

Pair This Movie With: Well if you want a night of cheesy sci-fi that rips off Star Wars, there's always Starcrash.