A hodgepodge of genres is splattered all over John Cameron Mitchell’s ludicrous (and ludicrously-titled) “How To Talk to Girls at Parties,” making for an incredibly brazen, outlandish, and totally bananas time at the movies. The creative collision of author Neil Gaiman and the director of “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” is a match made in bizarro world heaven as ‘Girls’ thrusts a conventional coming-of-age premise into a romance-horror-comedy-sci-fi blender with the top off, twists the knob to max-level, and blasts the angriest Sex Pistols song you’ve ever heard in your life. Things will get messy, and your head will probably hurt a bit after, but it’ll all be worth it.
The story kicks off when three punk-obsessed teens are met with the interplanetary shock of their lives. John (Ethan Lawrence) is the pudgy sidekick to bad boy Vic (A.J. Lewis) and straight-shooting Enn (Alex Sharp), who is the protagonist of our crazy tale. After the three venture to get noticed at a local punk show in their hometown of Croydon, hosted by Punk Queen Boadicea (Nicole Kidman), they embark on a midnight mission to find the after-party and do what all boys their age want to do: get laid. What they stumble upon instead is an outrageous house revelry hosted by a cultish community of intergalactic species who’ve come to Earth to understand its mechanics, consume any produce they deem viable, and anal-probe anyone who gets in the way of their task. Poor Vic feels the sting of that last ritual, John fits right in on the dancefloor because he’s so taken by the screeching-whale tunes, and Enn meets Zan (Elle Fanning), who defies her own group and gets a 48-hour release to discover the local way of life in Croydon with Enn by her side.
Gaiman’s vigorous imagination bursts through the bizarre nomenclature, traditions, and codes of the alien cult in ways that are at once shocking, sidesplitting and totally gross. Armpits will be felt, faces will be licked, interstellar blue men will scream, and aliens will self-duplicate in Cronenberg-ian fashion. Through all this horror and science fiction, Enn is coming of age and falling fast in love with Zan, who responds to their chemistry like an undergrad science student studying a newly discovered microbe. Fanning makes Zan superbly believable as she reacts and bursts into unpredictable actions, often resulting in social awkwardness and hilarity. “Show me the punk!” she yells, boisterously, and when Enn obliges by taking her to Bodaceia, we get our chance to see more of Nicole Kidman’s deliciously over-the-top turn as a no-shit-taking punk goddess. Her chrome-dyed hair and intense makeup is a stylistic amalgam of David Bowie and Siouxsie Sioux, and she devours every scene with a performance that’s 100% high-voltage energy of awesome eccentricity.
Mitchell and his co-writer Philippa Goslett adapt Gaiman’s story like petroleum adapts to cloth in a Molotov cocktail: popping and exploding at every turn. It gets a little exhausting, and one particular sequence at Boadicea’s spirals out of control into a full-on acid trip of visuals, messing with the entire tone, yet feeling like it just had to be there. Not only to serve the narrative and strengthen Enn and Zan’s special connection but because this movie needed an adrenaline injection of a floating-in-space-looking-like-gummy-bears montage. This raucous, anarchical structure is, of course, a great metaphor for how furiously punk the movie itself is.
Fits of profundities about our consumerist meat-eating culture, wobbly plot mechanics, and weak sub-motifs of father-son relationships are all part and parcel of what makes the film noticeably imperfect but no less engaging. Like Kidman says at one point, you either “evolve or die,” and that’s exactly what Mitchell seems to be asking from his audience here; get on the rollercoaster for this original and brazen ride, or stay away from the Luna Park. This outer space oddity is destined for the cult-classic section of some future camp horror and sci-fi B-movie aisle. If “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” had sex with “This is England,” their “Neon Demon” spawn would be called “How to Talk to Girls at Parties.” [B+]
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