Alternately brilliant and massively self-indulgent, (three hours? now really, David!). A reasonably straight-forward narrative, (a movie is haunted by the 'ghosts' of a former production of the same tale), is turned inside out, upside down and completely spatially altered by Lynch's unfettered and, you may say, unique imagination.<br /><br />Watching this film is like being allowed access to a very talented and very disturbed artist's psycho-babble. Or maybe it's just a very egotistically talented artist's gigantic joke, (who or what are the giant rabbits?). Whatever, it is still hypnotically watchable which says a lot for Lynch. I can't imagine any other director making this movie, (or any movie like it, not that there might be), and keeping you interested or making you care about the outcome or the fate of the characters, or rather the fate of one character, the actress playing the leading role in the film within the film and whose dream/nightmare most of the film seems to be.<br /><br />For this we have to thank, not only Lynch, but the extraordinary Laura Dern who gives a tour-de-force performance. She's all over the shop but then I suppose that is what acting is all about. Above all, she convinces you that this is serious stuff or at least that she is taking it seriously even if no-one else is. Shot on digital video it is also as much 'about' the process of creating, as opposed to 'making', a film as it is 'about' anything else and in the performances Lynch extracts from his cast, (and not just Dern), you could argue that it is also about the process of acting.<br /><br />It is also far from being a great film, (though it has at least one great sustained sequence - you figure), and at times it resembles nothing more than the out-takes from "Twin Peaks", "Blue Velvet" and "Mulholland Drive" though it lacks the cohesion of those films, (it's the most off-the-wall of any of Lynch's works and that includes "Eraserhead), and yet it is still extraordinary, unmistakeably the work of a unique and visionary artist and no-one, only Lynch, could have made it.