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Comedy, action, current events and musical numbers intersect in this futuristic story of overlapping lives in Los Angeles on the brink of an apocalypse. Key players include Boxer Santaros (Dwayne Johnson, formerly known as The Rock), an action film star with amnesia; Krysta Now (Sarah Michelle Gellar), Boxer’s porn star girlfriend who hosts a topical talk show; Private Pilot Abilene (Justin Timberlake), an Iraq war vet; and Roland and Ronald Taverner (Seann William Scott), twins mixed up with neo-Marxist terrorists.

Big question: Did writer-director Richard Kelly’s follow-up to the cult hit “Donnie Darko” really deserve the resoundingly negative response it received when it premiered as a “work-in-progress” at the 2006 Cannes film festival?

Skip it: Simultaneously over-stuffed and meandering, this “finished cut” of “Southland Tales” still feels incomplete. Important details about the characters and culture are crammed into lazy voiceovers, while actual scenes fail to take convincing shape as either narrative or satire. The actors struggle to illuminate their flatly written characters, Kelly’s visual style is frustratingly nondescript and the entire project gets bogged down with an endless amount of unfunny comedy.

Catch it: If you prefer your satire served in pre-programmed talking points. Alternative energy and the Patriot Act are namechecked repeatedly, presumably to disguise the lack of substance and original ideas in the film’s attempts at political commentary.

Bottom line: Even though “Southland Tales” is set in the future—the not so distant summer of 2008—it already seems dated. Kelly might yet develop into an important filmmaker, but this undisciplined effort demonstrates the downside of a creative mind with no filter.

Bonus: Amazingly a porn star-turned-talk show host isn’t the least credible concept in the movie. A news ticker briefly mentions a “Clinton/Lieberman” Presidential ticket in ’08.

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