'The Canyons' Movie Review: Dull Except For Lindsay Lohan, Critics Say [TRAILER]
Lindsay Lohan stars in her latest film The Canyons, a film that critics believe benefits because of her presence.
"The major exception is Lohan, who gives one of those performances, like Marlon Brando's in Last Tango in Paris, that comes across as some uncanny conflagration of drama and autobiography. Lohan may not go as deep or as far as Brando, but with her puffy skin, gaudy hoop earrings and thick eye makeup, there's a little-girl-lost quality to the one-time Disney teen princess that's very affecting. Whenever she's onscreen, she projects a sense of just barely holding on to that precarious slide area in the shadow of the Hollywood sign," Variety wrote on Sunday.
The New York Daily News also regarded the 27-year-old as the "main attraction" and "watchable." But, it said that she alone can't salvage the movie.
"With a descent as grand as Lohan's, the urge to watch is strong. Too bad The Canyons makes it so easy to look away," the newspaper wrote in its Tuesday review.
Lohan stars alongside adult film actor James Deen and Nolan Gerard Funk, who played in the TV shows Awkward and Glee respectively. Set in present day Los Angeles, the movie is directed by Paul Schrader, the writer of 1976's Taxi Driver starring Robert De Niro. It's also written by Bret Easton Ellis, the man behind the novels American Psycho and Less Than Zero. The film focuses on Tara, Lohan's character who is an aspiring actress. It documents her reckless life with movie producer and boyfriend Christian (Deen).
Critics are not amused with the movie's plot and bash it entirely.
"Far from the renegade, boundary-pushing, sexually explicit sensation that its makers have been suggesting, The Canyons is a lame, one-dimensional and ultimately dreary look at peripheral Hollywood types not worth anyone's time either onscreen or in real life," The Hollywood Reporter wrote on Sunday.
The NY Post didn't even include any positive thoughts in its Tuesday review and said "it was impossible to care" about any of the film's characters.
The movie comes to U.S. theaters on Aug. 2.
