Southland Tales/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Non Sequitur Scene: Lots.
    • Most notably a scene with a Japanese Prime Minister agreeing to have a pinky cut off for the energy source... only to have his entire hand cut off.
    • Also, the somehow live-action Disney Acid Sequence where J-Tims lip synchs to "All These Things That I've Done" by The Killers, as latex-wearing nurses dance 40s-style at him. It's a dream that Abilene is projecting into Taverner's head, and is a callback to the graphic novel, which reveals that just before the battle in which Taverner accidentally scarred Abilene, Abilene listened to "All of These Things That I've Done" when he borrowed Taverner's iPod on the helicopter.
    • That insanely weird car commercial featuring automobile sex.
  • Crowning Music of Awesome:
    • Elbow's "Forget Myself" in the trailer, sadly not making an appearance in the movie itself.
    • The music Moby composed for this film is up there with his best work.
  • Designated Hero: Boxer Santaros, Martin, and the Taverners are the only good guys. All others are just comic representations of political party stereotypes (i.e. Neo-Marxists are hyperbolic Liberals, and USIdent and the government are exaggerated Republicans).
  • Ear Worm:
    • The song "All These Things That I've Done" by The Killers ("I got soul, but I'm not a soldier")
    • Gellar's Britney Spears pastiche, "Teen Horniness Is Not A Crime".
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Jon Lovitz was just mesmerizing in his cameo.
  • Esoteric Happy Ending: Well, about everybody died in the same explosion. But it's mostly ok, given that among them were the Antichrist, the False Prophet, and the Whore of Babylon. Depending on how you interpret the characters. In the meantime, the Taverners shake hands, forgive each other/himself, are pimps and thus cannot commit suicide, and it's the Second Coming of Christ. The world may still be ending, but Jesus has returned so all is well.
  • Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory: May very well be a valid interpretation of the film. Or maybe just The Rock is Jesus. Who knows?
    • The film's characters are parallels of characters from the book of Revelations in the Bible: Boxer Santaros is the Antichrist,the Taverners are the Messiah, Dream and Dion are the Two Witnesses, Krysta Now is the Whore of Babylon, the ice cream truck is the pale horse that Death (Martin) rides on, Pilot Abilene is the Horseman War, Serpentine is the Dragon, and Fortunio is the false prophet.
  • Narm: Quite a bit in this film.
    • Boxer's nervous tic that looks like him imitating a paranoid squirrel.
    • "I am a pimp, and pimps don't commit suicide" was ridiculous enough the first times it was used, as justification why Boxer couldn't have killed himself. It becomes flat-out hilarious as the final line of the movie, dramatically repeated as the (maybe?) Second Coming of Christ (maybe?!) ends the world.
    • A delusional woman, believing she's a character in Boxer's script, jumps a confused Boxer and delivers her character's exposition and cryptic clues to him. Then she puts a gun to her head and announces she'll kill herself if she can't give Boxer a blowjob.
  • Nightmare Fuel: Lots, but especially Jon Lovitz.
  • Squick: There's an animation of two SUVs having sex. And you get to see it in detail. Three times.
  • True Art Is Incomprehensible: Seems to be the general feeling of the film's (tiny) fanbase. As this movie is completely incomprehensible even from the first minute, if you follow this rule, "Southland Tales" is the greatest piece of art ever made!