Lawrence Person's Futuramen

Here’s a film I’ve never heard of, that never got a U.S. theatrical release, that cost some €25 million to make, that sounds not just like a train wreck, but like horrifying, misconceived, epic train wreck.

The premise, from IMDB:

Cheyenne, a wealthy former rock star, now bored and jaded in his retirement embarks on a quest to find his father’s persecutor, an ex-Nazi war criminal now hiding out in the U.S.

Well, they doesn’t sound very promising right off the bat. But then you see who’s playing the lead role:

That’s right: Sean Penn, 50-something EMO rocker. That moves it from merely bad to legendarily bad. You look at the IMDB listing and think: “Well, it has David Byrne playing himself. That might be the only thing about this film that doesn’t suck.” And then you watch the trailer:

And think: “Well, it has David Byrne playing himself. That might be the only thing about this film that doesn’t suck.”

This may be the most ill-conceived film involving Auschwitz since Jerry Lewis’ The Day the Clown Cried.

But unlike The Day the Clown Cried, This Must be The Place was actually released. And I’d be willing to watch either of them once.

Once.

Edited to add: Though it’s played in Europe and Sundance, it doesn’t seem to have had a general U.S. release, so it might still pop up at art houses across the country this year.

It does seem to have gotten mostly good reviews from the kind of people who give films like this good reviews…