Fun. Just Fun.

William Booth:

CANNES, France — Richard Kelly looks not good. His face is the color of a mollusk. He is as clammy as a gym towel. His eyes are these little itchy, red-hot BBs. He confesses that earlier he almost passed out.

This is his story.

(Perhaps young filmmakers should look away.) The wunderkind director of the indie cult hit "Donnie Darko" is making his first appearance in the rarefied competition category at the Cannes Film Festival with his new work, a political, apocalyptic farce called "Southland Tales," about the end of the world, set in Los Angeles in 2008.

The director of the festival, Thierry Fremaux, described it as "an audacious, musical, poetic and political futuristic film about the United States of tomorrow — and therefore of today."

It is the worst-reviewed film at Cannes.

This portrait of dystopia is 2 hours 42 minutes long. It stars (believe me, this isn't easy for us either) Dwayne Johnson (the TV wrestler formerly known as The Rock), Sarah Michelle Gellar ("Buffy the Vampire Slayer"), Seann William Scott (Stifler from "American Pie") and Justin Timberlake, who sings.

Plus: cast members from "Saturday Night Live." Did we mention the film is about the end of the world? And alternative energy, and the Patriot Act, and war, and porn, and stop.