Werner Herzog's wildman film-making is best when tamed by a vast, calm underwater seaworld or when limited to mining the amateur video footage of an eccentric animal lover. Give the director free rein, an unleashed Nicolas Cage, sex symbol Eva Mendes, and the setting of post-Katrina New Orleans, and you get bedlam. Sure, a few scenes tickled. But for the most part, the film read as a Hollywood in-crowd gag reel that was never meant to be distributed.
On a hopeful comeback note: I was happy to see Fairuza Balk onscreen again.
