A Visit to 'The Canyons'

It's a strange thing about movies. They all require a certain leap of faith -- everything you're seeing is fake, the actors are playing make-believe, the stories are not real -- yet surprisingly, it's a rare thing for one to make it to the big screen that is so utterly absurd audiences cannot keep a straight face. We saw "The Canyons" on Saturday night. The woman at the box office implored us not to, but I had a feeling I wouldn't be disappointed whatever the outcome. I was right. The audience made it through the opening "dinner" scene OK.  It was poorly written and poorly acted, yet it still seemed like a "real" movie. But by the very next scene, all bets were off. Lindsay Lohan was required to act and, well, she's not really an actress anymore. From there it became sort of an interactive, audience-participation event, where you never knew what might set someone in the crowd into hysterics. The sight of Lindsay Lohan walking might do it for some -- she's even a bad actress when she walks! -- or her almost dropping a bottle might do it for someone else. James Deen wasn't much better, yet given the fact that his character was even more ridiculous than the others, he did as well as could be expected. The story revolves around a love triangle of Deen, cutie Nolan Funk (above) and Lohan, yet the whole time I kept feeling like it just didn't add up. Funk and Lohan were supposedly together many years ago, yet I kept thinking he looks 19, and Lohan looks 40. (Lohan's new love, Deen, looks 30.) Would any men really being fighting over this chain-smoking, puffy, odd-looking creature?  Was stunned to learn all three are 27.  (Yikes.) Of course, the principals' ages are the least of the things that don't add up. (Did you know you could swap cellphones with someone and they wouldn't even notice?) But if "Showgirls" and "Wild Things" shot on an iPhone on a $15,000 budget -- with plenty of Malibu real estate porn and some actual full-frontal softcore porn -- sounds like fun to you, you might want to visit "The Canyons." I'm glad I went.