Somewhere’ is pretty much, uh, nowhere

Unlike what seems to be most critics, I don’t resent Sophia Coppola . Sure, she may never have gotten the chance to make a film had her dad not been one of the greatest directors of all time. Or, I should say, Francis Ford Coppola has directed some of the greatest films in history: the first two “Godfather” films and ” Apocalypse Now Redux ” (the longer, director’s cut of “Apocalypse Now”).

But so what if she used her father’s name to get her start. It’s what she does then that counts. And, well, one hit, one nice try, one interesting failure and only one complete clunker out of four films isn’t all that bad an average.

The hit, of course, was 2003’s “Lost in Translation .” The nice try was her first, 1999 feature, “The Virgin Suicides.” The interesting failure was the odd mix of mood, music and anachronism “Marie Antoinette.”

And the complete clunker? ” Somewhere, ” Coppola’s ode to … well, it’s hard to figure out exactly what. Steven Dorff plays a movie star, a Bruce Willis type of action actor, who spends the better part of a week at Hollywood’s Chateau Marmont (the celenrity hotel where John Belushi died). He’s in town to do publicity for his new flick, but he mostly drives his Ferrari, shows up for photo sessions, gets drunk a lot, watches embarrassing and spectacularly unsexy pole dancers, spends time with his daughter ( Elle Fanning , Dakota’s little sister), fields text messages calling him a jerk (and worse) and, overall, just sits around feeling sorry for himself.

It’s not as if this is a soul worth saving. Dorff’s character, Johnny Marco, is a mostly vacuous guy with a smile to match. He makes connections in the most obvious and visceral way and breaks them with equally empty gestures.

And it’s not as if he learns anything over the course of his week-long sojourn, even though he does get to — and it would be a privilege if only he recognized it — spend time with his immeasurably cute and precious daughter. No, he can’t even tell her he’s sorry, unless his words get drowned out by the wash of a helicopter’s rotor.

So, then … what? What is this movie trying to say? Is it the movie-star equivalent of “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp”? Is it an existentialist meditation on the lack of vitality involved in the essential being cast adrift in a post-modern world? Is it an excuse for Coppola to spend a couple of days with her friends at the Chateau Marmont? All the above?

Hard to say. “Somewhere” is playing at the Magic Lantern. Go and see if you can figure it out.

Below : I tried to find a YouTube clip that was as empty as the film itself. How’d I do?