Soderbergh’s ‘Schizopolis’ Tries to Be Too Many Things

“Schizopolis” represents a minor act of self-indulgence on the part of the sometimes eccentric Steven Soderbergh but results in major tedium for the viewer. The gifted filmmaker, who made a splashy debut with “sex, lies, and videotape,” this time is relentlessly zany without being funny. It’s as if Soderbergh, who also stars in dual roles, were out to put a surreal spin on the earlier film but without sufficient inspiration to make it work.

The first third of the film is especially insufferable as his Fletcher Munson, an extravagantly neurotic employee of a famous self-help guru, struggles with the assignment of writing a speech for his boss. In the meantime, Soderbergh, who in appearance could pass as Woody Harrelson’s brother, piles on all the nonsense vignettes and subplots he can come up with to little positive effect.

The film gets better when Munson discovers a carbon copy of himself, a dentist, who in turn is having an affair with his--Munson’s--wife (Betsy Brantley). To top it off, a woman who is her double turns up at the dentist’s office as a new patient.

Actually, Soderbergh is on to something that kicks in but too late to matter much. When Munson passes himself as the dentist to his wife, he gains a unique opportunity to see himself as she does--a hopelessly preoccupied individual. This doubling allows Soderbergh to suggest how couples need literally to get outside themselves to recharge a marriage gone stale.

In his own playing and that of the lovely, poised Brantley, Soderbergh succeeds quite well in this. But you suspect that he’s afraid this concern may play as too obvious and banal. He may therefore feel he must distract us with all manner of dreary slapstick and asides. This is too bad because, as he has proved in his criminally neglected 1993 second feature, “King of the Hill,” about an abandoned boy coping in the Depression, he can bring terrific poignancy and immediacy to the straightforward narrative.

To be sure, Soderbergh suggests that we’re living in a universe of mind-boggling absurdity while so craving recognition and self-respect that we not only spawn phony prophets but also individuals hungering for the attention that attempting to assassinate them would bring. Soderbergh has lots to say but this time seems to lack the confidence to express himself seriously.

* Unrated. Times guidelines: It includes some strong language, some brief nudity.

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‘Schizopolis’

Steven Soderbergh: Fletcher Munson

Betsy Brantley: Mrs. Munson/Attractive Woman No. 2

David Jensen: Elmo Oxygen

Eddie Jemison: Nameless Numberheadman

A Northern Arts Entertainment release. Writer-director-cinematographer Steven Soderbergh. Producer John Hardy. Editor Sarah Flack. Music Cliff Martinez, Joseph Wilkins, Mark Mangini, Harry Garfield. Running time: 1 hour, 36 minutes.

* Exclusively at the Nuart through Thursday, 11272 Santa Monica Blvd., West Los Angeles, (310) 478-6379.