Tideland (2005) User Reviews

touch of Gilliam

[goldenboy72 · 7/10 · 13 September 2005]

Bizarre. Fantasmagorical. Frightening. A story-book nightmare.

Who else but Gilliam would give us a view of the inside of "The Dude's" ribcage?(Well, maybe Lynch)

In Tideland we approach to the edge of what is acceptable to the average film-goer but I kept wishing we would go over the edge and see what's there. Others in the audience claimed they wanted to escape to the lobby. It leaves most viewers uneasy, as if the film is an unpleasant taste to be rinsed from the mouth.

Whether or not you like it relies on the individual but what cannot be denied is that the film floats on the performance of Jodelle Ferland who plays 8 year old Jeliza-Rose as a modern day Alice though Tideland seems a far more frightening place than Wonderland. With the aid of her finger-puppet dolls' heads Ferland essentially inhabits 5 different roles withing the film. Easily one of the creepiest but most interesting performance by a child in years.

Good film? Bad? This hard-to-digest film seems to remain outside of such judgments. Best to see it for yourself. One thing is guaranteed: it's an unsettling journey into the realms of the weird.

A Dark, Bizarre and Insane Trip of Terry Gilliam

[claudio_carvalho · 7/10 · 3 January 2008]

When the dysfunctional Queen Gunhilda (Jennifer Tilly) dies of overdose, her daughter Jeliza-Rose (Jodelle Ferland) travels with her addicted father Noah (Jeff Bridges) to the old and abandoned house of Noah's mother in the country. While her father takes "a vacation" injecting drugs, Jeliza-Rose lives a world of fantasy with her heads of doll Sateen Lips, Glitter Gal, Mustique and Baby Blonde. Noah dies in his trip, and Jeliza-Rose meets the insane Dell (Janet McTeer) and her retarded brother Dickens (Brendan Fletcher), spending most of the time together.

I do not know whether Terry Gilliam was in an acid trip when he wrote the dark, bizarre and insane "Tideland", but it is one of the craziest movies I have ever seen. However, I liked the originality of the story. I could never guess the insanity of the next scene of this unpredictable film. I was also very impressed with the maturity and performance of Jodelle Ferland in her difficult lead work. This little girl is the story, and it is amazing and impressive, for example, the sequences with Jeliza-Rose preparing the dope of her father. The nightmarish atmosphere and the music score complete this original and unique journey to the irrational world of Terry Gilliam. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Contraponto" ("Counterpoint")

Hell

[amy7_05 · 21 October 2006]

I have never been so terrorized while watching a movie. The tension in this film is so greatly created but it makes you want to leap out of your seat, dash down the aisle, and never think about kissing again. I felt the need to take a long, hot shower after this film, as it left almost a pile of dirt on each my shoulders. When coming out of movies, I can usually express right away the emotional turnout the film provided but this left me bewildered, stunned, shocked, more adjectives. The art direction was probably some of the most beautiful I've seen, but it's hard to appreciate a film when you keep turning away and groaning in agony at what could happen next. I suggest seeing the film, as it is masterfully done and quite beautiful, but be prepared to be repulsed and saddened by all that you see.

A Very Disturbing Tale

[cheathamg · 6/10 · 15 May 2007]

That little girl has so much talent she's almost scary. Or, maybe, it's just at the part she played was so scary. She plays the part of a girl who is far too sophisticated. She has seen and come to grips with drug addiction, death, hunger and madness. A child normally lives in a world where there is little difference between reality and unreality, but the director, Gilliam, has taken this fact and twisted it into a nightmare existence that somehow seems acceptable. That is what is so scary about this film. The viewer can see the horror that is and the horror that is right around the corner, and also sees that the child will walk into it with her eyes wide open and yet still full of trust. And when the final, inevitable catastrophe occurs, you are left not yet knowing whether or not, or to what extent, the child survives as a human being.

Terry Gilliam and the state of the art

[miloc · 10/10 · 31 December 2009]

Having watched Terry Gilliam's Tideland just a few hours ago, I sat down to write a review and find that I can't. I'm still too angry.

Not at Gilliam, no. I am angry because I half-dreaded turning on the movie to begin with. Critics largely reviled Tideland on its (minimal) American release -- Rotten Tomatoes calculates its positive receptions at 27%. And a fair number of online commentators, even fans of the director, have branded the movie as "awful," "a mess," "disappointing," etc., etc. So, while I felt interest in Tideland, I put off watching it. The reviews made me wary and I hated to see Gilliam flop. But today it came from Netflix and I thought, why not, and popped it in.

And now I am angry -- angry because I cannot believe this beautiful, scary, funny, mesmerizing, heart-wrenching movie is the same one discussed in all those reviews. Have I stumbled on some unique director's cut that no one else got to see? Or have I misunderstood the purpose of movies?

At the beginning of the movie Gilliam himself appears, in black-and-white, like Edward Van Sloan at the beginning of Frankenstein, to inform us that we may find the movie shocking, but that it should be seen as through the eyes of a child -- innocent. One can take this prologue either as a bold stroke or a move of desperation, but either way, he's right. Little Jeliza Rose (played by an astounding Jodelle Ferland) goes through absolute hell, set adrift in a bare landscape by a heroin-addicted father (Jeff Bridges). Having no protection, no support, no food, and nothing to do, she builds a new reality out of, simply, play.

The redemption of imagination is Gilliam's Great Theme, and has featured in all his movies, but never I think with the depth of feeling displayed here. The camera glides and bobs and darts, low to the ground, a child's eye view, and the tone of the movie stays true throughout, without a whiff of sentimentality. Jeliza's situation is bleak and terrifying, but she's occupied with other and more pressing issues -- conversing with squirrels, squabbling with her dolls, and befriending her alarming neighbors: a witchlike taxidermist and her mentally retarded brother.

But she's no fool, and Gilliam isn't either. The dreadful reality is always present, and Jeliza knows what's what; she possesses that paradoxical childhood perspective that allows a doll's head to be "just a doll's head" and at the same time a living person with an identity. The movie shows us the world as her imagination transforms it; she spins terror and tragedy into fable.

This movie staggered me; it's a genuine work of art, and it left me in tears. If that puts me at odds with 75% of the critical consensus, I'll live with that. When I think of the endless trite garbage that these same critics routinely praise, garbage that often wins awards or breaks box-office records, comfortable and self-congratulating hackwork that rarely has a scrap of the kind of creative courage or honesty of something like Tideland, it frankly makes me question what a good movie actually IS. Do feel-good escapism and drearily unnatural "naturalism" really comprise the height of cinematic expression? And does the idea of being made genuinely uncomfortable by art, genuinely challenged -- surely art's primary function -- have any current market value?

In short, if Tideland is not a good movie, then what are movies for?

sometimes we all fall into our own fantasy worlds

[benvarkentine · 7/10 · 20 April 2007]

(For the record, this review contains a spoiler for the end of Time Bandits. But if you haven't seen that supreme and pure fantasy, go away and watch it right now)

Terry Gilliam's Tideland is a movie that deserved, and deserves, a much better reception than it got in the theaters, to which it was barely released, and from the critics, who found it "disturbing and mostly unwatchable" according to Rotten Tomatoes. Richard Roeper said it nearly made him walk out of the theater, which ought to be recommendation enough right there.

Disturbing it certainly is, not all in a bad way, but it comes to an end which is dramatically satisfying. Unwatchable it most emphatically is not. I'll believe Terry Gilliam is capable of making an unwatchable film when I believe I'd turn down an "indecent proposal" from Halle Berry.

Tideland is wrongly labeled a science fiction film at some sites. This is wrong. The film is no more an SF film than our lives are just because sometimes we all fall into our own fantasy worlds.

On DVD, the movie starts with an introduction from Gilliam that is not optional (you don't select it, it just comes up when you start the film). In this, he acknowledges that most people will not like the film, and talks a little about his hopes for it.

I kind of wish he hadn't felt the need to do that. A movie should stand on its own. On the other hand, it's the kind of audacious move I expect from him as a filmmaker-Terry Gilliam movies are a few of my favorite things.

At the end of the introduction, Gilliam says that at the age of 64, as he was at the time he made this film, he thinks he finally found his inner child. And it turned out to be a little girl.

The girl is Jeliza-Rose. When we first meet her, she's living as the enabling daughter of two drug-addicted parents (played by Jeff Bridges and Jennifer Tilly, but it's not really about them).

Then her mother dies, and her father takes her on a trip far away, to the house where he grew up. But that was a long time ago; the house is the middle of nowhere and in a state of great disrepair.

And soon, her father departs himself on his own trip.

And Jeliza-Rose is left alone.

What follows is how she copes with a world which is increasingly turning crazy and dangerous. And how her imagination acts both as her source of escape and as her protector.

Members of Gilliam's cult of fans like myself will be able to make connections with other child heroes in his work, like Sally in Munchhausen and Kevin in Time Bandits. It's Sally's role in her film to keep the Baron going when all seems lost. And Kevin comes home to find a world in which his parents promptly explode. But Gilliam keeps Jeliza an individual, and the pain she faces could conceivably make Sally and Kevin curl up and die.

In a way, this story is about what might have happened if Kevin's parents exploded at the beginning of the picture instead of the end. Jeliza has to keep herself going, her Baron falls down no matter how many attempts she makes to prop him up.

Jeliza is played in one of the great unflinching child performances by Jodelle Ferland, for which the young Canadian actress was nominated for a Genie (that's Canada's Academy Award). Which is only right-if we don't stay with her character, the movie doesn't work, and Ferland carries it off shiningly.

Do not listen to anything else you've heard until you see this movie for yourself. Is it perfect? Oh hell, no. It's not a masterpiece like Gilliam's best work with the Python team, or a gem like his own Munchausen or Time Bandits.

But it is the best film he's made since Fisher King, and in many ways his most mature.

Bucket anyone?

[earthsign · 1/10 · 22 March 2008]

The most well written, acted and directed film I've wished I didn't watch. A masterpiece of twisted, sick and horrifying circumstance.

I take my hat off to the entire cast and crew for creating a mesmerizing movie so tainted with simplicity and perversity that I could not turn it off despite the desire to be ill which come over me on a number of occasions.

So powerful, yet such an unnecessary journey. I just can't appreciate Tideland's achievement in pushing boundaries simply for the sake of (..without any apparent intent or meaningful message..) having an impact upon people. I was left disturbed by how far this movie goes, and confused as to exactly what emotions I was intended to feel by such a depressing concept. I was too sickened to laugh.

Pan's Labyrinth in the least was based within some context of war, Tideland was based within.. who the hell knows.

BUT I implore any curious person to watch this film and have your own experience with it. Many people 'appreciated' this film, and I admit I did too.

For making me feel ill I award this movie 10 stars..

..and then minus 9 stars for it's total worthlessness in relation to everything other than itself.

Well done Gilliam, cast and crew! Absolutely fascinating!

Gilliam's return to form

[paulduane · 8/10 · 1 August 2006]

I was very intrigued by the range of opinions about this film, and I'm kind of agnostic about Gilliam at the best of times so could have gone either way. In the event, it seems to me like a very personal, smallscale and risky film - the kind of thing major directors don't do often enough.

Gilliam introduced the screening I attended by saying that plenty of the (invited) audience would hate the film. He also said that its subject is the resilience of children, in a world where we're encouraged to treat them as helpless victims most of the time.

I was pretty much enthralled from the opening scene. Jeff Bridges plays a character who's like the dark side of the Dude. A semicoherent junkie who's trained his daughter to cook up his heroin shots for him, he'd be the world's worst parent figure if it wasn't for the mother, a grotesque Courtney caricature who seems to me to be the only person in the film Gilliam's unable to summon up any liking for.

Events lead us into the wheatfields of the midwest and the story takes off into completely unforeseeable territory. There are countless reference points touched on over the next hour or so, in a very playful way - everything from Dorothy's farmhouse and her encounters with witches and brainless tin men, to the dinner table scene in Texas Chainsaw Massacre, to Psycho, to Jan Svankmeyer and The Bride of Frankenstein, and in what's either a major theft or a loving homage, one of the plot points of The Butcher Boy becomes a central event here.

The storyline takes detours into whimsy and the massively grotesque - there are two scenes here that will stay with me for weeks, one featuring a sex act in a taxidermist's workshop, the other best left undescribed - but there seems to me to be a central interest in the way that kids keep themselves sane through the most extreme circumstances, through imagination and play, and through projecting their fears onto made-up characters, that really shows an understanding of the way children's minds work.

The main character, the kid, is tremendously convincing, funny and - in the end - heartbreaking. I think this film might just stand with classics like Voice of the Beehive and Bernard Rose's totally underrated Paperhouse as one of the great films about solitary children and their imaginations, and their ability to rise above their fears.

The Age Of Unreason, Or...Why Terry Gilliam Can't Catch A Break

[bad_eats · 10/10 · 18 November 2005]

Poor Terry Gilliam. The visionary director just can't catch a break. Blessed with one of the most fertile imaginations in modern cinema, equally renowned as an animator, filmmaker, and iconoclast, he has made a handful of highly original, single-minded films, most of which are now considered classics (although it tends to take a few years before critical revisionism regards his work as such; I bet few recall The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen was first considered a costly bomb on par with Heaven's Gate). But of late he has had to suffer a critical beating for his mainstream-designed The Brothers Grimm, not to mention the well-documented collapse of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (why does the word schadenfreude come to mind?), and more often than not he is regarded as somewhat of a brilliant madman with integrity to burn, willing to battle Hollywood at any cost to keep his visions intact.

Now comes his adaptation of Mitch Cullin's Tideland, a category defying film that is at turns poetic, disgusting, absurd, and darkly funny (think the languid pacing of Spirit of the Beehive, the fever dream of Alice in Wonderland, the wry insanity Psycho, and a large dose of Terence Malik gone insane). In many ways, this is the purest Gilliam film since Brazil (a film that also borrowed liberally from other sources while maintaining its own originality), and hearkens back to the days when auteurs were not only allowed to follow their wildest muse but were expected to do so. And that, too, presents what will no doubt be Tideland's greatest failing, as well as its highest achievement. Cinema has become so cynical in the last twenty years - so narrow in scope and so entertainment driven - that anything which requires viewers to experience a motion picture on its own terms is usually greeted with scorn. These would be very tough times, indeed, for the likes of a young Fellini, Kubrick, and Lynch. That's not to say Tideland is a perfectly misunderstood creation, although it should be pointed out that those who are screaming foul about this film being pointless, self indulgent, and too weird are likely the very same people who ridiculed Grimm for being unoriginal, mainstream, and plain. Yes, there were walkouts at its screenings, gasps of shock, even angry grumbling. There were also laughs, applause, and continued debates concerning what the film was really about (how often does that occur these days after a screening?).

In the end, Tideland will likely please a select group who prefer to experience cinema rather than opposing it with their own expectations (there were those who were still talking about it two days following its premiere, even when they hated it). But for those who are anxiously wanting Time Bandits 2 or desire some degree of Pythonesque humor, Tideland will disturb, bore, and profoundly bother to the point of contempt. Nevertheless, it is a very unique and, at times, incredible film, infused with at least two amazing performances, beautiful photography, and one of the most enigmatic endings I've seen in ages.

Hate it or love it, few will be able to deny the lingering, ineffable vibrations left by this film, or that it stands as further proof that its director has stayed true to himself. Of course, prepare for the yin/yang laments to come in spades: Grimm would have been a better film had Gilliam been left to his own devices; Tideland would have been a better film had Gilliam not been left to his own devices. Poor Terry Gilliam; apparently he can do no right even when he does.

A movie that is both deeply disturbing and captivating

[rubyseeds · 7/10 · 22 October 2006]

First of all, bravo to Jodelle Ferland; she really did an amazing job playing Jeliza-Rose. I think I based my rating mostly on her acting, as it's been a day since I saw the film but I have no idea what to make of it.

I didn't dislike the movie, per se -- it had plenty of distinct positives, like the great storytelling, cinematography, and acting, as well as the dark humor, which was one of the things that held the movie together for me. The plot was interesting, though it would not nearly be that fascinating if it wasn't told through a child's perspective. That was also why the movie did not depress me much, despite the fact that the protagonist is in such a (for an adult) horrible situation throughout pretty much the entire 122 minutes. I did feel for Jeliza-Rose at times, though, when occasionally a hint of loneliness was felt through the sheer absurdity of what was happening on screen. Another thing I was amazed at by the end of the film was that it didn't really have a bad aftertaste, even if it was one of the most disturbing movies I have watched. I was quite thankful of that.

Initially, after I left the theaters I was pretty sure I hated the movie because it confused and disturbed me so much. Now that I've thought about it for a while, I'm not really sure whether I love it or hate it. As it was, probably, with the majority of the night's audience, I think it's a little bit of both.

Gilliam at his most self-indulgent; Two hours of pure tedium

[ink-stained · 1/10 · 6 May 2007]

On the audio-commentary track to the DVD version, Terry Gilliam makes repeated reference to the film being just too daring and too different for audiences to grasp. That supposedly is why it flopped at the early screenings and was never given a proper release. Well, Mr. Gilliam, if you are reading this, let me just say that you are deluding yourself. Your film sucks. It is the least interesting film you have ever made.

I say this as a fan. I love most of Gilliam's films. His adaption of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was dead-on. This film never approaches the excellence of his best works. Or even his best misfires.

Like all of his films, Tideland is about the crashing together of worlds of fantasy and reality. In this case it is about how a young girl's innocence and imagination shield her from the hellish world she is thrown into by emotionally damaged adults. The point is that what we would think would be a terrify ordeal -- the death of her parents, her isolation in a decrepit farmhouse, the antics of the bizarre Dell and Dickens -- is, when seen through the eyes of a young girl, actually an amazing adventure, maybe even the most exciting time of her life.

It's a great idea, unfortunately the film it inspired just doesn't work. Brief scenes of grotesque ugliness bookend a staggeringly dull, seemingly endless story where basically nothing happens. No tension builds in the plot, and aside from the young girl herself none of the other characters are remotely interesting. The sense of awe and whimsy a film like this needs to truly grab a viewer is simply absent.

You know the film is in trouble when Gilliam tacks on a prologue where he looks directly into the camera and begs viewers to watch the film through the eyes of a child. If the film actually worked, he wouldn't have to rely on such special pleading, would he?

Fairy tale the way it's supposed to be?

[Galina_movie_fan · 27 March 2007]

I don't know what to think of it. Beautiful? Yes, Creative? Of course. Disturbing? You bet. Funny? Hysterically. What could be funnier that Jeff Bridgess playing aged Dude - dad to the extreme, part II - "Duddy takes vacation to the point of no return"? Or Jennifer Tilly as a caricature of Courtney Love? Unpleasant? Very much so. Original? The director himself called his movie, "Alice in Wonderland meets Psycho" and these are just two references of many. You can name all novels, short stories or the movies about the little girls escaping their dreadful realities in the world of their imagination as well as "Wizard of Oz", Tennessee Williams' plays, Roman Polanski's "Repulsion" and one of the most stunning screen adaptations of "Alice in Wonderland", Jan Svankmajer's "Alice". Gilliam in "Tideland" borrows from them or rather meditates on the same themes, using his unique tools, and bringing his unique vision and talent in the familiar harrowing story of a child lost.

The movie is technically superb and visually arresting - it must be. If anything, Terry Gilliam is known as one of the most talented and wildly imaginative modern filmmakers, the true eccentric. He describes himself better than anyone ever would:

"There's a side of me that always fell for manic things, frenzied, cartoony performances. I always liked sideshows, freakshows. ...Absolutely grotesque, awful, tasteless. I like things to be tasteless."

I guess, whether you'd like "Tideland" or not, would depend a lot on your sharing his fondness for the things "absolutely grotesque, awful, tasteless" - there are plenty of them in "Tideland" yet strangely it is tender and sad, and in its best moments undeniably brilliant. Often called modern fairy tale for adults, the movie fits perfectly the description. Fairy tales, the unabridged versions of them are often scary, graphic, disturbing, violent, bloody, gory...and fascinating. Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Anderson - his "Little Mermaid" is one of the saddest, even tragic tales ever written. Oscar Wilde's fairy tales, "Arabian Nights" - the real thing, not the adaptations for the children; myths and legends of ancient Greece - the myth of two brothers, Atreus and Thyestes, the story of Oedipus - that's pure horror and tragedy. Well, back to the Gilliam's fairy tale. Did I like it? I don't know. What I do know that the very last shot of the movie, the one which supposed to symbolize the happy ending, that of the girl's face from the angle that distorts her features turning the angelic face into the sinister cynical mask that could belong to the creature of the darkest nightmares and with two huge black holes of eyes is the most horrifying one in the movie which is packed with the scenes of horror. None of them is as disturbing, unsettling and memorable as this face - happy end according Terry Gilliam.

This movie made me physically sick

[timothyhilditch · 5/10 · 5 January 2022]

Follows the journey of a girl, she doesn't have parents she has 2 junkies. She has to escape into her imagination after her father brings her home into a nightmare. By 5/10 this isn't a normal rating this movie exists where few other movies go, once they hit a1 because of the disgust and degeneracy, it rebounds back up the rating because of the twisted vision or genius the movie creates. You will be disgusted by this movie, don't make the same mistake as I, don't watch on a full stomach. Once the twisted reality came to fruition, I felt my heart rise and intestines ache. First time a movie made me feel disgust in my core. This movie certainly is an experience, great acting certainly did not calm me. The way Terry Gilliam constantly keeps the camera at an angle, perfectly represents the experience of disorientation.

With adult themes throughout shown through the eyes of a child, keep away from children because this poison pollutes the brain.

One word: Amazing

[oenmet_een_k · 9/10 · 25 August 2006]

This is a movie that does not rely on SFX to impress the audience. The storytelling is amazing.

Without noticing, I was pulled into the fantasy world that this movie is. Nothing is judged, no good or evil. No clichés, no heroes. Just the story. Not entirely unlike 'Brazil'. But this movie relies less on a 'weird' future world. Sure, the atmosphere is weird. But not the surroundings. Little events, happening all the time, make up the world. It is unclear whether they are happening inside the characters head, or they are real events.

Perhaps a bit too much for most American style 'junk food film' viewers, but I hope some of the 'Hollywood Junk' producers take notice, and learn.

Too bad this movie didn't show in more theaters. A real 'must see' for those who loved 'Alice in Wonderland'

This is the mother of all the movies with crazy people

[siderite · 7/10 · 13 April 2008]

I can't really grade this film, as it is so weird and at the same time compelling. Having seen it, I wish I hadn't, but both me and the missus could not stop the movie, we had to see it end.

Bottom line, if you are like me and you thought this is some fairy tale movie you are dead wrong. This is about a girl, raised by crazed drug addicts, going in the wild prairies, having both parents die, meeting insane neighbours and ending up with crazy town folk. All this while talking to herself and imagining she is somewhere (and somebody) else.

If you want to know what this movie is like, imagine one of those cliché films where some inbred redneck has a mummified parent in the attic and hunts innocent but horny teenagers in order to impale them into a hook or something. Well, this film is describing the childhood of the said killer, before actually finding out there are nasty horny teenagers in the world and are still blissfully ignorant of the world around them.

Gilliam strikes back

[yassassin · 9/10 · 17 July 2006]

Without a doubt, this is Gilliam's strongest vision since Brazil. It's also a movie that has to be seen on the big screen so don't miss it, if it comes near you.

People may find it too long, too obscene.. there are moments that are definitely hard to swallow but hey, that's our problem, not Gilliam's. Then there are moments of pure joy.

And the ending will leave you shaken to the core. It's surreal and true at the same time and it encapsulates the whole experience. Didn't read the book this was based on but from what I've heard, Gilliam is pretty much spot on.

I really need to see Tideland again soon. I really need this little vacation.

Heroin-babies Need The Most Attention

[ElijahCSkuggs · 7/10 · 1 March 2007]

"Stupid babies need the most attention." Anyone? Answer will be at the bottom.

Well, going into Tideland I knew of two things. 1. Roeper hated it. 2. Terry Gilliam made it. That's about it. It was recommended to me by a fellow movie fan when I asked for a fantasy recommendation. And I have to say the circle of recommendations has stopped with me, unless someone asks me "Do you know of any strange, weird fantasy tales?" Then and only then will I say "You bet your fat-ass."

When the DVD began Terry gave a well-thought out introduction to the film that really got me eager. "Some of you will hate it, some of you will love it and some of you won't know what to think." Obviously I'm praying I'm going to love it, since I enjoy most of Gilliam's work. But unfortunately I did not fall for it. But on the other hand I did not hate it and it did leave me thinking a little bit.

Tideland's a story about a little girl with a a chemical imbalance thanks in part to her rock n' roll druggy parents. It's never said she's slow, or messed up. But the average little girl isn't always in this type of fairy-tale, make-believe land. Anyways, father and daughter both hit the road after mama kicks the bucket, and head off to Papa's childhood home. The house is abandoned, dusty, messy, and just plain old dilapidated...and it fits this duo's lifestyle perfectly. Papa (played very well by Jeff Bridges) is a ex-rocker, still drugging it up with the love and support of his innocent young daughter Jeliza-Rose, also played very well by Jodelle Ferland, who was the little girl in Silent Hill. What follows is a child-like perspective of what the incredibly imaginative Jeliza is experiencing and how she interacts with other bizarre characters. If she's not talking to other weird characters you're just following Jeliza around, listening to her discuss her situations with her fellow friends, who are old doll-heads that she can place on her fingers.

Tideland is a well done movie that succeeds in showing us a strange world through the eyes of a strange little girl. Sure, it's interesting to hear see how a little girl can deal with such grown-up situations, but for me, I just didn't really care about what was going on. It's what I'd come to expect from this type of situation. A little girl growing up in a crazy life, then meets another crazy life....okay then. I do have to admit the situations she's finds herself in are mildly interesting and entertaining, but it all seemed a little obvious and predictable. A couple examples: Mystique and the hole, all squirrel scenes, the monster shark ending. Overall the movie for me was good, not great. It's not the most entertaining flick in the world, but it was intelligently made and left this viewer wondering what he saw...and why it was made. Just these questions alone gives me answers I'm looking for. I enjoy seeing movies that are different and unique, and this is definitely one of them. 7 outta 10

Simpsons episode where the Flanders take the kids after social services take the kids away from Homer and Marge. Classic.

One of Giliam's Finest Masterpieces

[stephen-lynch-1 · 10/10 · 21 October 2006]

Completely forget any review you read by Richard Roeper, because it's true crap. Tideland was a brilliant view of a child, living in her very own fantasy world. She maintains her loneliness by holding conversations with her 4 doll-head friends, as well as squirrels and her new friend, a sexually confused brother of a crazed witch lady. The movie is full of brilliant humor as well as the realism of drug-crazed parents, mixed with the fantasy world of a little girl's imagination. This movie was so much more than I had hoped for. Way to go Terry, this is purely one of your finest. Right up there on the level of Fear and Loathing. Any critic that gives this film a bad review should seriously question their competency as a film critic (ahem Roger and Ebert)...

Boring & foul, bad screenplay and a (temporarily?) insane director.

[freeist · 1/10 · 29 November 2009]

SPOILERS ARE MARKED AT THE BOTTOM.

In the beginning of this film, Terry Gilliam gives a short, pompous introduction to his masterpiece, telling us we should experience it the way a little girl does. Implied message is: the non-elite among you will not understand a child's mind like I do. The marketing psychology seems to have worked. Otherwise, I truly cannot account for why so many people consider this movie so good.

I believe that any little girl watching this movie would be mercifully asleep within 20 minutes. The plot is simple: a little girl, Jeliza Rose, with drug addict parents lives in a world of fantasy that continues when she becomes an orphan. Within that simple paradigm, the action wiggles around like snake with head-wound-- for two hours. With five minutes left in the movie, there was suddenly a plot point-- and I was stunned. Then it was over.

That is hardly the main problem. This film was just ill-conceived to begin with. It's like hearing a tone-deaf band playing a song about the resilience of children. Jeliza's lack of response to her parents' dying says to me damaged child, not resilient child. Even if I believe that a girl could have such a terrible childhood that she would unknowingly snuggle for a sweet night's sleep with her father's corpse, I still wonder what kind of teenager and adult is that child, Jeliza Rose, likely to turn into? When all the theatrics she uses to get through the traumas are no longer possible, likely she will feel self-disgust and trauma-- for her whole life. When she looks back on her father dying, is it going to be talking with her dolls' heads she remembers, or the fact that she prepared the father's deadly shot? Or alternately she might just grow up and stay in her psychotic state. A child's resiliency is only to get through childhood itself, and the only purpose of childhood is to become an adult. This story struck me as a ruination of a child.

Jodelle Ferland as Jeliza-Rose gives the only good performance in the movie, but not good enough to carry whole scenes by herself, as she has to repeatedly. Too many scenes are just her talking to her doll-heads or her other imaginary friends. And she does all the voices in those scenes. If scenes of a little girl playing alone were truly interesting to adults, then adults would be acting out in this way every day. Gilliam doesn't help Ferland any great special effects that would make them interesting. There is nothing about the doll heads that makes them real characters, and at times, of course, you have trouble knowing who is talking to who.

Brendan Fletcher plays the mentally retarded Dickens with a Forest Gump accent so thick I thought I was watching Gump audition videos. Jennifer Tilly plays his sister, Dell, who dresses and acts like the Wicked Witch of the West. Neither of these characters were believable at any point, but it is not the actors' fault if they are given a bad script and directed by the insane. These were exactly the kind of characters you'd expect in a very cheap horror movie by a first time director/writer. The movie meanders around them and Jeliza and you wait in vain for the character scenes to end and the story to return.

If it had a real story, 30 minutes might have been cut from this. The film looks like Gilliam started shooting without having a story, and then tried to find it in the editing room. That's good way of producing bombs and running movies over budget.

Fans of this movie like to describe how well it is shot, but a good director of photography cannot save a movie from an criminally insane director with warped script. Buy the 500 frame slide show and not the movie. Besides all else, This movie was absolutely offensive. Those interested, read below.

******SPOILERS BELOW************

You have offensive moments in this movie that are supposed to impress us with their artistic daring. My blood curdled at the very suggestion that the Wicked Witch of the West would proposition the delivery man. The delivery man! This original idea is stolen from a billion different pornography scenes. Gilliam adds his artistic kink to make it more unbelievable and horrifying. I couldn't believe the guy didn't make roadrunner dust out of there. Then, Gilliam makes it truly obscene by having Jeliza witness it, while the doll's head (in Jeliza's voice) describes explicitly what sex act was being performed and how. It wasn't even a plot point. It was just there.

The scenes of the little girl preparing daddy's heroin shots are played for laughs, as are the deaths of both parents. I could understand some dark humor in these scenes, but not to this degree. The mother's death is filmed with 1960s Batman dutch angles.

Jeliza finds her grandmother's old wardrobe, which just happens to fit (another believable point), and her grandmothers makeup, which is still fresh enough to use. She then makes herself up as an adult and has a scene with Dickens where they get so close to pedophilia that I'm surprised the FBI did not investigate what Gilliam might have cut out.

Need I add the cruelty of a little girl watching her father's body get taxidermized? There's more than this. This movie so seriously disturbing, but it doesn't give you a plot to give it meaning, its theme has no credibility, and therefore the movie doesn't make your effort worth it.

Snatched from the Jaws of Life

[salieri125 · 8/10 · 29 September 2007]

There's no way for me to talk about this film without making it personal. I can recall the age of eight, wandering around the square desert of my parents' backyard, action figures in hand, thinking up stories, doing voices. Tideland plays to that sort of nostalgia, but it balances it with a darkness visible on the horizon that cancels out whatever baser desires such nostalgia plays to. I imagine when I see the film's landscape (and the house)how wonderful the setting would have been to that sort of play, how much such play could benefit from that setting, and how lost one could get in it all. Permanently lost. The fields transforming into a sea is a great metaphor for that.

Tideland is a tragedy. We, the audience, know or suspect that Jeliza-Rose isn't going to turn out well after this movie's over, that her imagination may be keeping her alive and marginally sane, but it's out of desperation (and it's clear that she understands much more of what's going on than is explicitly stated - observe her knowing looks, as in the scene where Dickens leaves her alone), that the little girl is going through so much for relatively little. In a way this film is about what many viewers incorrectly believe Gilliam's Brazil to be about: the triumph of the imagination. But, if anything, in Brazil Sam Lowry's imagination is what causes the trouble to begin with, and in the end is his last resort. In Tideland, imagination is defeated. In the end it's like one of those horror films where the heroine survives all, only to be shown walking away with the monster/killer still behind her/in her house/in the backseat of the car/etc. But there's an emotional resonance here that can't be found in, say, Halloween or A Nightmare on Elm Street because Jeliza-Rose has no literal fate, has no death but life. She returns to the real world. And I suppose that's the tragedy.

This is Gilliam's most complete film since Brazil; it has an emotional quality, an imaginative quality, and a GENUINE quality that no other Gilliam film has, and which few other films, period, have these days (cinema as it is now being so choked with irony). With Brazil we may be tempted to cry at the end if we are quick to tears, but with Tideland we may be tempted to develop tears anywhere. It reminds me of Forbidden Games, of Spirit of the Beehive, of Truffaut's Small Change, of Renoir's The River, of The Wizard of Oz, of Curse of the Cat People, and in some ways of Ford's How Green Was My Valley. It has pedigree.

Ferland's performance is nothing short of supernatural. She carries the film when it wanders or when it becomes flat out strange. She is that human voice in the wilderness.

Not that there aren't some problems. The accents are fairly ridiculous all of the time and all the supporting characters are Gothic caricatures with performances to match, but then this is a child's world and a child's field of vision, and so I can accept these. The point is that reality doesn't much enter into it. There isn't much plot to speak of and this turns up in a few draggy sections. But this film has an absorbing quality too, and I find that if I turn it on I am compelled to watch all of it.

I keep thinking of Pan's Labyrinth, which was so critically lauded while Tideland was so despised. PL's an okay movie, but it's a cynical adult tale of childhood, detached in its understanding and sort of heartless and cruel. The problem is that there is such an obvious disconnect between reality and the imaginary world. They exist separately. Of course, the Spanish Civil War setting is really no more real that Ofelia's own world, no less cartoonish than the world of Tideland. But it tries so hard to be harsh and gritty. It is just so difficult for me to *buy* Pan's Labyrinth, to take it seriously OR to NOT take it seriously. Tideland is a story about a real person living in a believable (or at least buyable)world. And I suspect that this is why Pan's Labyrinth is so critically lauded while Tideland is so critically despised - because it is unwilling to offend. Also, where PL is unfathomably ugly, Tideland is quite beautiful.

Overall, this may the only film of last year I can honestly say I liked, that made me feel anything for it. So it's good.

A sick, sad wonderland

[rooee · 7/10 · 12 April 2010]

If could be argued that Tideland muddies the waters of innocence. Heck, Terry Gilliam has created the murkiest of murky lakes, and he's asking us to dive right in. As the director explains in his introduction (a rarely welcome indulgence, but vital here), we should always remember to watch this movie through the eyes of its protagonist, little Jeliza-Rose (a brilliant, utterly convincing Jodelle Ferland). The first hour is all about her and her best friend, a doll's head called Martinique, exploring the attics and fields of their new home, and the fantastical adventures they create together. But with the introduction of the barking mad Dell (Janet McTeer) and her retarded brother Dickens (Brendan Fletcher), events take a more sinister turn. By the end of the movie we witness, in her relationship with the latter, the first glimpses of adulthood in Jeliza-Rose. She is commanding of Dickens, demanding even; while he will never have the chance to grow up, we glimpse the woman Jeliza-Rose is becoming. Worse, in her heavy makeup she resembles her late mother, the ghastly Queen Gunhilda (Jennifer Tilly).

Tideland makes fascinating demands of us as an audience. Gilliam steals much of the glee from his grim. We often feel repulsed. Why? Because as adults, with all our neuroses and preconceptions, we can no longer regress and observe the world around us from a position of innocence. We can judge Gilliam - not harshly, I hope, for all his laudable ambitions - but we cannot judge Jeliza-Rose. Moreover, we cannot *help* Jeliza-Rose. (This is what gives Tideland its strange, elusive power, I think.) And with the final shot, tragically, you wonder if it's too late for anyone in our world to help her... should she ever return.

Disturbing.

[mike-puorro · 7/10 · 16 April 2023]

You know how child abuse permanently messes kids up? Terry Gilliam made a charming movie about that.

We are supposed to believe the victim is coping successfully with obscene circumstances through the power of innocence and imagination, but I felt like the circumstances depicted in this movie are like watching a 20 car pile up on the highway.

It's a train-wreck from beginning to end, not the movie itself, but what the child protagonist goes through.

Watching Tideland is like watching a building burn down with people trapped inside when there's nothing you can do about it.

I'm surprised the actress who played the lead role isn't scarred for life.

Ranks with the best set pieces recorded in my toilet

[CineCritic2517 · 1/10 · 19 February 2007]

Erhmmm....

I think I owe all the movies I rated 3 or less in the past a big apology. Movies I described as being monotonous, pointless or pretentious in fact never were. Or maybe it's just that I just experienced the equivalent of Hell in a movie which had everything that a quality movie rightfully lacks.

After regretfully seeing movies like The Dentist II and Swept Away, I thought I'd cought a glimpse of the worst films ever created. Terry Gillian, tonight, proved me wrong to a degree that would have made self-flagellation a more amusing pastime although my neighbours would not have been able to tell the difference.

No, this movie didn't shock me, well, it did, but not through graphic violence or any other form of deliberate shock-techniques. It didn't have to. It shocked by showing a 2 hour story which was so vacuous it could suck up black holes, acting which makes amateur performance-art something u want to take your kids to see and mind-raping dialog that makes grown men start wetting their beds again. Not to mention a fine collection of rave reviews this movie got which make you lose what little faith in humanity was left. This movie is to dramatic fantasies what 'Faces of Death' is to an episode of 'Little House on the Prairie'. And I'm still being kind here, very very kind.

Trying to express what I felt exactly when I fast-forwarded this 'gorgeous and emotional trip' (as some very scary person typified this abomination) besides sheer agony is close to impossible because its range lies somewhere between catatonic disbelief and that which someone experiences after being bitten by a dog with rabies.

We all know that scene where u see a guy strapped to a chair, ball-gagged, his eyes pried open, forced to watch something on a screen while through his ears he is being force-fed the first three seconds of Barry Manilow's chorus of "Mandy", endlessly repeated. The thing this guy is watching? you guessed it: Tideland.

-100/10

Disturbing fantasy should be seen rather than read about. Though many people will hate it, this will reward those who are ready for its tilted world view.

[dbborroughs · 9/10 · 27 September 2006]

I've just seen Tideland and I'll be damned if I know how to describe it.

Probably the best thing I can say is stop reading this review and see the film. Its a unique experience, however its not one that many people are going to warm to rather they'll be upset by it. The odds are you'll probably not like it, but its at least worth trying, especially if you love film. If you want to know a little bit more keep reading, however my words, and probably no words can do the film justice. You just have to see it.

The story of Jeliza-Rose who's father takes her to his boyhood home after her mother overdoses is a pastoral trip into the bizarre. Set on the prairie, in a world like an Andrew Wyeth painting, this is the interior life of a little girl who doesn't understand the world around her, partly because of her age and partly because of the world she grows up in. Its a very bizarre trip thats part fantasy, part comedy, part horror film, part tragedy, part what ever else you can think of. Its unlike any Terry Gilliam movie and like the darker parts of them. Its the realism of Fisher King and the nightmare and flights of fantasy of Brazil mashed together.

Its not for all audiences, or even all Gilliam fans. This is a profoundly disturbing film. Its very straight forward with these tiny flashes of oddness (which get longer as things go on). In its way its possibly one of the scariest movies of the year, not just because of what we see on the screen but also because of how it echoes out to our own lives and how we see the world being just as cockeyed, we are all in our own fantasy worlds.How Jeliza-Rose sees the world is in its way the same way we all do. Its a scary thought.

Forgive me for not being more specific, this is a film that needs to hit you with out expectations and without preconceived notions, so the less you know the better it is.

I liked the film a great deal even though it made me feel really uneasy. Possibly one of the best films of the year, certainly one of the best Terry Gilliam movies, this movie demands to be seen by serious film lovers and those with an open mind.

It's not the drugs... but the bizarrely fantastical reality.

[jjgemini · 6/10 · 14 October 2006]

Terry Gilliam, the Monty Python alum, is considered one of the most talented... if not all-around craziest... directors making movies. He has, for the most part, tried to steer clear of the troubles and turmoil of Hollywood that he seems to feel are debilitating to the creativity to people like him.

After directing "Brazil" which has now become his magnum opus, Hollywood shunned his vision and ideas and cut the movie to embarrassing shreds. You can see the piece of crap that they tried to release in theaters and what was shown on TV in the Criterion Collection box-set. It's worth it to watch just to see how insanely disrespectful the studio system was to Gilliam. He had successes with "Fisher King", "12 Monkeys", and most recently "The Brothers Grimm". But for the most part the director has tried to go with independent financing, which unfortunately has led to major upsets as evidenced with his films "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" and the never released "The Man of LaMancha", documented in the biography "Lost In LaMancha".

"Tideland" sees Gilliam returning to his independent roots, but based on a book by an obviously very disturbed Mitch Cullin. The premise of the film, and I would guess the book, is a happy 10-year old girl charmingly named Jeliza Rose who is forced into a life of drugs, depravity, and horror. However, the old expression, "what you don't know, can't hurt you" follows suit for the little girl as she happily prepares her parent's heroin needles, without any seeming knowledge that what she's doing is wrong or may have any horrific outcomes.

The horrific outcomes arrive as her schizophrenic white-trash mother suddenly dies and her father, somewhat thankful that the harpy has left them, whisks his daughter away to go live with his mother. Terry Gilliam's talent lies in throwing such staid and nasty atmosphere into the imagination and fantasy of Jeliza Rose. Her mother's death and subsequent deaths that happen around her do not ever phase her. It's as if balloons are popping and life is going on as it should.

We glimpse Jeliza Rose's fantasy world in the form of old worn Barbie doll heads that she uses as finger-puppets and relates to as normally as she imagines a mother should talk to a child. Each doll head has an individual personality voiced by Jeliza Rose and they act as her confidantes and friends. Her fantasies draw, we are led to assume, from movies, as well. And at some points she mocks the pain and suffering of reality by overly emoting into the mirror while quoting Scarlett O'Hara in "Gone With The Wind" with a sigh and a withered hand to her forehead. "Oh me, oh my!" Jay Carr in his review of the film in the newspaper AM NY, said after her father dies, "...She plops her grandma's blond wig on his dead head and freshens up his decomposing corpse with makeup. Then things get weird." And weirder it gets. We are introduced to a menacing Wicked Witch of the East character, who's epileptic brother has had a lobotomy to help him but has resulted in making him mentally slow. The boy's mental capacity is around the same as the 10-year old Jeliza Rose, and their relationship becomes creepily disturbing when they start playing "kissy face" together. Nothing ever happens and it's done in an almost whimsical way. But I couldn't help but think that there was no horror movie I had ever seen that was scarier or more disturbing than this.

Weirdness is always expected from the likes of Terry Gilliam. However the subject matter and story, which I can only assume comes from the warped mind of Mitch Cullin, takes a lot of swallowing. As you can imagine, there were people who walked out of the theatre. But the adventure Gilliam takes you on, is almost worth the pain and suffering. In the end, Jeliza Rose finally confronts reality to some extent. Although, the end comes somewhat abruptly, with some unresolved unknowns about the other characters. At 2 hours, maybe Gilliam was told yet again he had to cut it down.

As a somewhat bizarre, but understandable precursor to the film, Terry Gilliam, himself, in an uncomfortable close-up, in black and white, and lit in shadows looks out at the audience and gives a charming and smiling disclaimer that "some of you may hate this film"... and adds hopefully with a twinkle and a grin "but some of you may love this film". And he adds that we should all laugh at the laughable. It's the juxtaposition of fantasy and horror that makes the film wholly intriguing.

No, I really can't recommend this movie to anyone. What anyone can handle is completely subjective and to sit through the film is disturbingly weird. But because of the elements of fantasy as seen through a child's mind are there, it becomes something alluring and undeniably brilliant. With blatant references to "Alice In Wonderland" I'm sure Gilliam would like you to consider this a modern version of the story... complete with bong-smoking caterpillars, and mushroom munching rabbits.

Gilliam also directed the Hunter S. Thompson novel "Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas", which was all about the drug-addled adventures of a "gonzo" journalist. There are comparisons that can be drawn, but in "Tideland" it's not the drugs that distort reality, it is the mind of a sweet talking Southern Belle named Jeliza Rose that brings us into this nightmarish faerie tale.