At the Movies - 'Confessions of a Dangerous Mind'

The Associated Press

It's hard not to walk into "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind" with the giddy expectations of a bachelorette on "The Dating Game."

George Clooney directs, for the first time. Charlie Kaufman wrote the script. Steven Soderbergh is an executive producer. And Julia Roberts, Drew Barrymore and Clooney himself are among the stars.

Walking out afterward, though, you're more likely to feel the cacophonous confusion of "The Gong Show."

Despite a compelling performance by Sam Rockwell as Chuck Barris, creator of those shlock-o-rama TV shows of the 1960s and '70s, the movie has serious tonal inconsistencies. And it's hard to commit to a movie that's as unsure of itself as a couple on "The Newlywed Game."

Most of the time it's an offbeat biopic, following Barris' rise as a television producer and his parallel secret life as a CIA assassin -- at least that's what he claimed he was in his 1982 book, "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind: An Unauthorized Autobiography," upon which the movie is based.

But then Clooney intersperses interviews with real-life entertainment figures who worked with Barris. Dick Clark, "Dating Game" host Jim Lange and frequent "Gong Show" panelist Jaye P. Morgan talk about their memories of Barris, who's now 73, as if they were in a documentary. (Clooney even dug up Gene Gene the Dancing Machine and Murray Langston, the Unknown Comic -- an impressive feat in itself.)

The material seems tailor-made for Kaufman, who's specialized in recent years -- with varying degrees of success -- in stories that toy with reality: "Being John Malkovich" and "Adaptation." But he and Clooney can't decide whether they want to take a tongue-in-cheek look at Barris' life or concoct a serious psychological thriller. They seem to want both and achieve neither.

It doesn't help that two similar movies already exist. This year's "Auto Focus," starring Greg Kinnear as "Hogan's Heroes" star Bob Crane, followed another figure of '60s kitsch TV who led a seedy hidden life. At least we knew that was true; Crane had copious videotape evidence. (Like Crane, Barris had a weakness for the ladies, and found it nearly impossible to stay faithful to his girlfriend, played by Barrymore.)

But "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind" more closely resembles "A Beautiful Mind," the 2002 Oscar winner for best picture, which starred Russell Crowe as schizophrenic mathematician John Nash.

Barris could be imagining that he's recruited as an assassin by CIA agent Jim Byrd (Clooney, who oozes sex appeal even behind a bushy mustache). And he could truly believe that he's having a torrid international affair with another spy, Patricia (Roberts, who obviously had a blast playing an unpredictable comic role).

Clooney the director and Kaufman vacillate between holding Barris up as a delusional wacko and praising him as a misunderstood genius; then again, he may have been both.

Forget all the pseudo CIA nonsense, Barris is an undeniably fascinating figure. He was onto something when he realized more than 30 years ago that people would have no qualms about humiliating themselves for face time on television.

Looking at the so-called reality shows that now permeate primetime TV, from "Fear Factor" to "American Idol" to "Joe Millionaire," it's obvious that he's still right.

Rockwell brings Barris beautifully to life; his performance is one of the few stable things about the movie. He's not trying to do a dead-on impression, like Jim Carrey playing Andy Kaufman in "Man on the Moon," but he's got the voice and the mannerisms down. More importantly, he seems to understand Barris' spirit, something Barris himself probably never did.

"Confessions of a Dangerous Mind," a Miramax Films release, is rated R for language, sexual content and violence. Running time: 115 minutes.

Two and a half stars out of four.