A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III

It helps when you are not sober when watching this out of whack cheesy flick, directed by the son of the all time great Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather). Roman Coppola even starred (as a little curly boy) in the all time classic The Godfather, but Roman has mostly been making music videos while wearing Italian clothes and he hasnt inherited the talent his father had to tell a coherent story, because this movie is all over the place, but in a good cheesy way...

A story about heartbreak, starring the ultimate friendly whacko Charlie Sheen, who is still so cool, calm and collected as ever before. Terrific supporting roles by Bill Murray and Patricia Arquette. Great soundtrack. Wacky photography. And filmsets and props that are to die for!

Best consumed when one is NOT sober...

It's hard to tell whether "A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III" is a good-natured bit of self-parody on the part of Charlie Sheen, poking fun at his reputation as a compulsive womanizer, or a vanity project designed to showcase the actor's now-legendary sexual prowess and playboy image. I suspect it's the former, but even if it's the latter, it still doesn't make for a very entertaining movie.

In plot, the movie feels an awful lot like a full-length version of "Californication," as a middle-aged, sunglass-wearing Angeleno laments how he's screwed up with the love of his life (Ivana played by Ketheryn Winnick) because he's never grown up enough to stay committed to a monogamous relationship.

Writer/director Roman Coppola's eclectic, scattershot approach alternates between scenes set in reality - or a close proximity thereof - and wild, but surprisingly flatfooted fantasy sequences heavy on op and pop visuals and graphics (Charlie is himself a successful graphics designer) and light on originality and cleverness. Apparently, there's not really all that much worth taking a glimpse of in ole Charlie's mind after all. Indeed, despite a big name cast that includes Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman and Patricia Arquette, the movie feels an awful lot like a third-rate film school project that somehow got green-lighted by an actual studio.

Well that's how the movie might have been promoted. But while "Being John Malkovich" actually was funny and enticing, this might have one good scene in it (involving Cowboys). It tries hard to be quirky, casting Bill Murray helps with that. But Charlie Sheen who is playing the character Charles Swan does not cut it. I like quite a lot of Charlies movies he has done. But he can't pull this one off (meta or not).

The problem of the movie therefor relies not in its incoherence (it has somewhat of a straight story line in between all the dream sequences or whatever you want to call them), rather in the lack of "good" incoherence. There is system and a plan when it comes to madness and trying to explore the mind as again "Being John Malkovich" has proved. Charlie Kaufman (another Charlie) is better suited in portraying this. I would suggest not wasting your time on this

A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III (2012)

1/2 (out of 4)

Writer-director Roman Coppola quickly made this thing during the time that Charlie Sheen was going through his mental breakdown. In the film Sheen plays Charles Swan, a man who gets dumped by his girlfriend and begins to act in a variety of strange ways so us lucky viewers get the chance to look inside his mind to see what makes him tick. Okay, who in the hell really cares what makes Charles Swan III tick? I'm going to steal from Roger Ebert's review of this movie and he's right when he said a movie is a sad thing to waste. Not only is Coppola's talents wasted but so are Sheen's and Bill Murray's. Mr. Murray doesn't make too many movies these days and it's rather sad to see him wasted his talents in this film. I'm really not sure what Coppola was going for, although I'm quite certain somewhere down the road this here will be a cult movie with fans dropping acid and smoking joints to it. What we've basically got are a lot of small scenes where Sheen gets to act out a wide range of things. He would be dancing, flirting, find himself in a dangerous situation or he might just be looking at the ladies. The problem is that none of these "visions" are funny and after about ten-minutes it becomes clear that you don't care about Swan or anything in his head. He's a rather boring character who I'm guessing is loosely based on Sheen but I think the film would have perhaps worked better had they really gone after Sheen and the mental state he was in when all of this stuff was going on. I think that would have been a lot more interesting than what we get here. The only reason I don't give this thing a BOMB is that I'm going to at least give the filmmakers, actors and producers some credit for at least trying something different. However, just trying something different doesn't mean you're going to end up with anything good.

I have to agree with much of what (but not all) critics said about this film. Yes, many of the things they say are true. However, I also agree with what Hoop posted here about this film. There is a 70s kind of scattered filmmaking feel to it that has appeal in the format of this type of film.

It's one of those films I rate lower than how much I kind of liked it. It's not a brilliant work flawlessly executed, but it has a glisten to it in places, that kind of odd appeal that makes it worth having done it. You see, some projects I feel just had to be done so then we can move on. It's not that it shouldn't ever have been done, but that it allows for an entertaining time and it is merely what it was perhaps meant to be (which I'll leave to the viewer's POV).

I just kept thinking, wondering, while watching it (knowing it was probably slammed by the critics which I know now, it was) that it is going to be one of those films someday, slammed at release and yet rediscovered and rethought later, and more appreciated then perhaps in historical ignorance as happens. But through that objective hindsight kind of way that allows us to, at some point many years later, appreciate the currently appreciable. Cheers!