Julian Po

One reason for Christian Slater's recent alcoholic, belly-biting freakout might be Julian Po, the sophomoric self-indulgence of first-time director Alan Wade in which Slater has the misfortune to star. As the title character, a drifting accountant prone to muttering inane philosophical observations into a tape recorder, Slater looks puffy and joyless -- which gives the film its only (probably unintentional) credibility.

Off to visit the sea for the first time (only one of Wade's novel inspirations), Po gets stranded in a small town when his car breaks down. (Or did it? Wade likes these meaningless puzzles.) The town is so small, in fact, that Po becomes its only source of diversion, the addled stranger continually followed around town by a phalanx of gawking residents. Finally Po blurts out that he has come in order to kill himself (the truth? another conundrum?), thus elevating himself from mere curiosity to Forrest Gump-like sage. His previously recorded thoughts transform people's lives as he comments on mortality and the mystery of it all. As Slater himself might be pondering now, the only mystery about Julian Po is that it ever got made. At the Nickelodeon, the Harvard Square, and the Allston and in the suburbs.

-- Peter Keough