I really like movies. Ask anyone I know. I like them. Movies that is. Them could mean anything. I like movies. And I’m not one of those people who only likes the biggest blockbusters with a budget that easily covers the GDP of a couple of the poorest countries in the world with enough spare change to send a rocket to the Moon. I also like watching movies with lower budgets and less glitz; probably more than the latest sequel of a remade sequel if I’m honest. Hell I’ve even been known to watch a movie with subtitles. That’s right, one of those movies that isn’t spoken out in English and forces you to activate that part of the brain responsible for reading and understanding. But I have to draw the line somewhere. And that somewhere is Melancholia, a movie as arse-clenchingly bad as it name suggests.

The movie starts well enough with some arty shots of some of the characters moving at extreme slow motion but this is about as fast as the plot goes. As for the plot, it is roughly this. A planet found hiding behind the Sun (to be fair the director said he wasn’t interested in making a movie that was realistic in astrophysical terms) is on a collision course with Earth. But before that happens, we follow a couples wedding reception, organised by the bride’s sister and brother-in-law in a lavish setting in a mansion somewhere in the countryside. You can probably guess that there are complex relationships between the family; in particular the two sisters.

There are some funny parts, most often involving the father of the bride. My problem is that at 130 minutes long, not enough stuff actually happens to keep you interested. The lead character Justine (Kirsten Dunst) is clearly disturbed but no hint is ever given why. She just wanders around the mansion like she has been drugged, occasionally appearing at her own wedding reception to do something bizarre. The best example being when she is followed on to the golf course by an intern at her employer’s company (run by her new father-in-law) and for no real reason, proceeds to bonk him out on the green. Her husband finds out and predictably leaves the story at this point. She also has a piss on one of the golf holes, resigns from her advertising managerial position by launching an attack on her appalling boss/father-in-law and wanders off for a bath while people are waiting to cut the cake.

The film is split into two parts. After the above happens, part two starts to focus on Justine’s sister, Claire. The most laughter generated through the whole movie happened when part two was introduced and some guy in the cinema moaned ‘Oh no.’ A few people walked out at this point. I didn’t. I cant once something has started. The only movie I have ever stopped watching was Year One with Jack Black in as it felt like my brain was being molested by continuing to watch it.

Claire is more anxious about Melancholia crashing into Earth. Her husband, an amateur astronomer, assures her that the planet will pass by but will definitely miss. After about an ice age worrying, Claire finally decides to look on the In-ter-net and finds a website that describes how Melancholia will indeed crash into Earth after initially passing it. Only the director himself knows why she couldn’t just switch on the television at any point and watch a new bulletin. Presumably a life-ending event like a planet head-butting our own would make the news, even if it was at the lighter end of the news. But this is followed by even more suspense when Claire tries to print the document out but power is lost to the building. Oh no! She could have saved the world with that print out. She could have taken it to the president of whatever country they were in (never mentioned) or at the very least hand it in to the local constable/sheikh/warlord/sheriff.

But no, power is lost so they go outside to watch the planet miss. Or not miss. We just don’t know yet! Even though it’s kind of mentioned at the start of the movie. The director wanted to let us know it will actually hit so that we would not be distracted and could focus more on people urinating on golf courses. Now there is a deep message.

At some point during this snoozathon, Justine tells Claire that the planet will hit Earth and that the Earth deserves it because we are all nasty on Earth and that life will end and we will deserve it and that, apart from Earth, there is no life anywhere else in the Universe except from Earth. How do you know this, quizzes Claire, a fair question I thought. I just know, bored Justine. That’s sorted then. An answer straight from the book of Fundamentalist Christianity.

The planet does indeed pass Earth (sucking some of it’s atmosphere away in the process like a fat bully) and Claire breathes a difficult sigh of relief. The next morning, she finds her husband, John, tinkering about again with his telescope. He wanders off. She gets worried. She finds him in with the horses at their mansion. Either he has realised that Magnolia is coming back for another go or a horse bummed him to death. The second one probably would have been more interesting but no, it turns out Magnolia is on the rebound. Again, it isn’t explained how or why a planet larger than Earth can swing back towards Earth but you don’t need to know, you don’t want to get distracted away from Dunst’s boobies under the light of the new planet do you? It’s ART!

Claire runs about a bit like a lunatic before finally realising that you cant run away from a planet heading for your face. So the two sisters, together with Claire’s young son Leo head to the 19th hole on the golf course and build a little tepee out of sticks to protect them from the billions tons of force when Magnolia greets them. This was actually the best part of the movie, watching the planet grow larger and larger until they are all incinerated.

I do have a point though. I mentioned at the start I like arty movies that are emotionally deeper than Transformers or Avatar but I sometimes get the impression that there are some right snobby bastards who like this kind of movie and will defend it to the death. They search for meaning that just isn’t there and then when someone criticises it they look down on you as if you are too stupid to understand. I do kind of understand where the director was coming from in using the movie as a way of showing what depression can be like but any message, for me, is lost under an overwhelming weight of boredom and confusion.

It was the kind of movie where I was glad that they all died in the end.