an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.