Francis's Fiasco

Youth Without Youth (Sony)
Combining Francis Ford Coppola’s worst visual and dramatic excesses, Youth Without Youth simultaneously parades extravagant imagery and tells a nonsensical story, and is so appallingly bad that it’s amazing that an accomplished veteran filmmaker was at the helm. The early sequences of his protagonist’s accident and recuperation beg for black comedy, but a humorless Coppola plays everything straight, which only accentuates the ridiculousness. Coppola’s biggest failure in adapting an obviously unfilmable story is how he visualizes his protagonist’s conscience warning him of upcoming pitfalls: the director has filmed these sequences with a miscast Tim Roth speaking to himself, usually in front of a mirror or another creaky visual device.
EXTRAS: Coppola commentary; three behind-the-scenes featurettes.