0.5/4  Deserves a Zero
The film is just a nightmare. The acting is substandard, the plot makes no sense, and the idea of putting a child in a story with rotting corpses, heroin overdoses, and strongly hinted at incestuous themes is simply monstrous. Jeliza-Ros... (read full)

3/4  Weird.
After watching the interview with Gilliam, I got more confused than I wanted to be. The thing is that the movie is too disturbing, but he speaks about the innocence of child. I understand his point, but I don't agree at all with his way of... (read full)

4/4  A Must See
This is a story of Jeliza Rose, a girl whose parents are junkies and leaves her to herself. She talks to herself, squirrels, dolls, her retarded neighbor. It is the best film of 2006 that I have seen. Thankfully I saw this in the theater. ... (read full)

5/5 Powerful film of dark childhood fantasies is up to Gilliam's standards, but beware this poor DVD release
  by Muzzlehatch (the walls of Gormenghast)
I have a history with Terry Gilliam, well with his films anyway. Seeing BRAZIL at its Chicago premiere, early in 1986 on the 2nd date with my first girlfriend was a defining movie moment for me; it was one of a select few modern films that really helped me to appreciate what the medium could do. Also, it was played at an earsplitting volume and it was on one of the biggest screens in the city at the time...all in all an unforgettable experience.

So I've loved the director ever since, which makes it rather inexplicable that I waited to this long to see TIDELAND, a film problematic in its release and reception even for Gilliam, who unfortunately has to be used to such things by now. I guess that on a certain level I found the storyline, what I knew of it anyway, rather unnerving and perhaps something I just didn't want to deal with at this moment in my life; and indeed, it is an unnerving, disquieting film - but it is also a film that sucked me in and moved me and consistently kept me enthralled, so it was worth some of the discomfort that I felt throughout. Sometimes a little pain can open us up and get our energies going more than a lot of pleasure.

As we open, young Jeliza Rose (Jodelle Ferland) lives with her drug-addict parents, somewhere not really explained....but she really lives in a fantasy-world of "Alice in Wonderland" and travel across the sea, made palpable and real when she and her aging rocker daddy Noah (Jeff Bridges) leave her suddenly-dead mother (Jennifer Tilly) for a trip back to Noah's past, in the windswept prairies of Texas. The literary Alice meets the cinematic Land of Oz on the broad prairie landscape as we soon encounter the mad, Wicked-Witch-like Dell (Janet McTeer) and her retarded brother (maybe...?) Dickens (Brendan Fletcher), and the action for the rest of the film revolves around the two dilapidated farmhouses and unspoken mysteries at the heart of childhood and adolescence, forbidden longings and never-revealed secrets that fuel Jeliza Rose's already potent imagination as she retreats into an imaginary and impossible world every bit as potent as those of her drug-addled parents and the mentally challenged pair she meets.

I've rarely seen a film that communicates both the beauties and terror of solitude and solitary myth-making, the sadness of a lonely child underpinning that child's forays into invention and recreating her own desolate world. Ferland is absolutely remarkable, inhabiting not only the overactive and brilliant mind of Jeliza Rose but also her four distinct talking doll heads, who gradually become more and more distinct and "real" as Jeliza's world crumbles - seemingly unnoticed - around her. At the end, it takes a literal explosion of violence to bring Jeliza back to the real world. Maybe.

I'm still sorting through my feelings on this; it was at times rather depressing and difficult to watch, perhaps because of what I'm bringing to it at the moment myself, but it's a beautiful film (unfortunately marred by a DVD transfer that cuts the 'scope aspect ratio down to 1.85, God knows why) and it does, in fact, fit in extraordinarily well with Gilliam's overarching theme of the power of fantasy and imagination and its inability to ever be completely squelched by the nature of ordinary, dull reality. It's far more successful and interesting overall than the higher-profile BROTHERS GRIMM from the same year and it's a terrible shame that it got such a poor release. The director clearly hasn't lost his touch, which makes me all the more excited about IMAGINARIUM OF DR. PARNASSUS coming up.


5/5 tideland a strange trip
  by lewis sinclair (iowa)
Swimming through fields and sending daddy on strange vacations. What great characters. A story I wasn't in any hurry to see end. A great imagination of the director through a little girl that takes everything in stride.

1/5 Reckless Self Indulgence
  by One Big Happy
I have enjoyed nearly every Terry Gilliam film, but this one is genuinely HORRIBLE. It wouldn't be worth your time if you were to see it for free, let alone paying for it. And it's not that I don't "get it." It really is, very simply, a mish mash of vague ideas that don't bear fruit with pointless events and images that keep piling up into a big nothing. It just flounders and is ultimately irritating and tedious to get through. We're supposed to be amazed at the young girl's perseverance and tenacity as a reflection on the power of innocence to overcome insanity, profanity, neglect, abuse, etc., but you actually feel like you're watching the child in the film being abused by the film itself and are not able to do anything about it. It isn't clever, it's just kind of sick. I watched Gilliam's introduction after I had seen the film, and it was more entertaining than the actual film to hear him try to explain away the massive and reckless self indulgence that this film is. To me, the introduction revealed that Gilliam himself knows in his heart that this has fallen apart, and yet he can't quite get himself to admit it. It was a lot like listening to Tim Burton trying to explain away the mish mash at the end of his take on Planet of the Apes. "I just go with my feelings." Please. The thing that really hurts about these weak films is how much we know these directors are actually capable of. I believe Gilliam is a brilliant, though very inconsistent, film-maker who has totally missed the mark here. Cinematically, structurally, story wise, it all stinks. There is nothing hip or deep about this film. It was a mistake.

2/5 Tedium Is Not The Same As Art
  by Quiero Cafe (South Texas)
Disclaimer: Lifelong Gilliam fan. And yet, I put the blame for this movie's failure squarely on his head. First off, for what it has to offer, it is much too long. Second, it never seems to figure out what it has to offer. Third, when it realizes this, it resorts to just battering us with ugly stereotypes. Fourth, it wastes the sincere talents of almost everyone involved. Specifically the little girl, despite her awful excuse for a southern accent, has to carry the whole movie and does. Unfortunately, she has to share a lot of screentime with a very unpleasant character who we're supposed to find lovable (I guess) but is just teeth-grittingly grating. In fact, his appearance was the moment I realized I was hating the movie. My only hope was that he (Dickens) would disappear soon - such was not to be. Perhaps this only speaks badly for my own tolerance but there it is.

Jeff Lebowski starts out so strong that it's difficult to believe he agreed to spend 3/4 of the movie as a corpse. A gassy corpse at that. Gilliam can't get enough of that. The part should've gone to somebody not so immediately likable, such as Jim Belushi. As it was, I just kept hoping Lebowski would leap back to life and elevate the movie out of its long slide to sub-mediocrity.

The evil-ish female counterpart was played over-the-top, but well, until the inevitable southern stereotype of the Jesus freak emerges. Somehow it's never enough for Hollywood to have a character be creepy unless they also harbor some sort of Christian fetishism. In some ways this is stressed as the character's most glaring flaw, above and beyond tanning her loved ones and keeping them around for future resurrection.

As an aside I have to beg Hollywood to hire some dialog coaches for southern accents. I know that it doesn't matter outside of fly-over country, but it is truly grating to have to hear hokeyness pass for our true manner of speaking. It would be far better to just forgo the accent than to have it done in a manner that sounds like Ignorance 101. It's funny how many English actresses (and the Scottish actress in No Country) can get this right, whereas Americans have no ear for it at all. Since George Washington is always portrayed as speaking like a 19th century Shakespearean actor, certainly accuracy can't be that important to movies like "Tideland". (Which is supposed to be Texas, according to the book summary, but is never referenced in the movie. Convenient. Got a bunch of sick twisted characters with unbelievable habits? Just throw them in Texas and anything is possible. For once I'd like to see the Vermont Chainsaw Massacre).

3/5 uhhh, well ...
  by Zipper-Head (West Chester, PA)
I really enjoy Terry Gilliam's work, which is why I'm choosing the 3 star rating. I've watched it once so far and seen many elements which, by themselves in other applications or contexts, I'd gladly rate 11 stars. Jeff Bridges is, as always, a real delight. The composition of each scene is nearly breath-taking, the rythm is flawless, and just about every other technical aspect of the film is far above reproach.

The story has me ... distressed. I think I need to watch this a few more times before I get past the "freaked out" stage that I'm in at the moment. Perhaps then I'll re-rate it. Definitely NOT for everyone, but I want to assimilate this film, even if it means fighting some new compulsion to bathe in diesel fuel or nitroglycerin or something equally soothing.

Terry Gilliam has no equal to be sure, and in this film he dives very deeply.