A young Steve Buscemi plays an unnamed convict, aka the OPP, Orleans Parish Prison man, in the 1991 straight-to-video release, Zandalee. In the opening scene of the film, OPP is seen riding on the back of a garbage truck, somewhere in the French quarter of New Orleans. As Zandalee (played by Erika Anderson) stares on from the dirty curb, OPP grins and yells at her, “Nothing’s as good as they say it is,” as if he knows something she (and we) do not.

It’s almost as if Buscemi is the cipher for the screenwriter / director and is not-so-subtly providing the disclaimer on the cover of the package: You see this hot pile of TV garbage…this content that we couldn’t even push into a theater? Yeah, this movie that you think is probably going to be pretty bad and not worth your time? Well, it’s going to be much worse than that. Cause, nothing’s as good as they say it is, pal. Consider yourself warned.

But I didn’t heed the between-the-lines warning because I couldn’t. Much like the oath taken by the Night’s Watch in Game of Thrones, I have sworn to myself (and you) that I will persevere through every Nicolas Cage movie out there. Thick or thin. Highly engaging or noxiously boring, I’m in. Watching. Every. Single. One.

I shall live and die at my post. I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the walls. I am the shield that guards the realms of men. I pledge my life and honor to the Night’s WATC(H), for this night and all the nights to come.”

So I watched Zandalee, which one online reviewer aptly described as “bafflingly slow, bafflingly strange, and bafflingly bad” and another reviewer described as a “weirdo-erotic-not-thriller-tragedy” hoping that somehow Cage’s performance would shine through the mess and (if not redeem) somehow salvage it.

I think this time, he failed.

This (litte-t) titanic film[ing] of banal stupidity and unconvincing softcore porn, failed to interest me even in how badly executed it was, and I am a person who often finds the charm (and even relishes) in a well-meant effort gone terribly wrong.

But this…this was…WTF was it?

A movie about a struggling and impotent (former) poet, Thierry Martin (played weirdly by mustachioed Judge Reinhold) who seems to have lost his way in life. By taking on the management of his father’s construction company and abandoning his first-love of poetry, Thierry feels increasing disillusioned (depressed?) and estranged from his life and in his marriage to Zandalee, as he slowly begins to lose her respect, and falls out of passion. He can’t mirror her intense energy and strong libido.

Couple this with his reunion to an old friend, the uber-masculine, uber-artistic, uber-brooding Mensch himself, the death-by-mullet working man painter Johnny Collins (played by none other than Nicolas Uber Cage).

To add to this apparent-to-all-but-the-players-themselves shit show, Johnny takes a job working for Thierry; Thierry is an obvious momma’s boy; Johnny paints nudes in his warehouse/apartment; and Zandalee seems a little too angry at the world and horny AF to boot. What’s that all spell for you?

Spoiler alert: T-R-O-U-B-L-E

Or in New Orleans Cajun, Tremé Trouble.

Needless to say, given those catalytic conditions, there’s a lot of awkward, borderline non-consensual sex between Zandalee and Johnny that springs up quickly. Johnny woos her with lines like, “We’re inevitable. I want to shake you naked and eat you alive.” When that doesn’t work he turns on the charm, telling her, “I think you’re a sad woman.”

Johnny pursues, Zandalee resists, then recants, then falls into bed with the inevitability of hot sex with Johnny because of whatever it is that attracts her to this angry, petulant three-musketeer-looking painter. Johnny assures Zandalee (whose name is sometime pronounced like it rhymes with Candle-lee and other times like Speedy Gonzalez saying ‘Andale’) that, “Nobody will be hurt from this because it is what it is.” Deep.

But its the sleepy-eyed Thierry who eventually gets hurt when he clues in to the cuckolding and confronts the couple (indirectly) by taking them on love-triangle motorboat trip into the Okeefenokee Swamp. It’s there that Thieery decides to unravel by threatening to shoot himself at first, and then later by diving off the moving boat into the gator-filled waters of the swamp. Spurning Johnny’s effort to save him, Thierry chooses to drown instead because as Johnny not-the-poet suggests, “People die and everybody dies. So leave him.”

Groan. I’ve blocked the rest out. I don’t even remember what happens to Johnny and Zandalee when the credits roll. Probably nothing.

What did I learn from the World According to Johnny Collins?

• How not to behave at a dinner party. You really shouldn’t try to kiss another man’s wife in his kitchen while everyone else (including your girlfriend) is hanging out in the dining room. Just common sense really.
• How not to have sex on a washing machine.
• How not to have sex in a confession booth.
• How not to ensure your affair goes smoothly and off without a hitch. (Don’t leave your keys to your apartment with your mistress, then leave your answering machine on, so she can hear all the other women you are sleeping with when she drops by unannounced. She just might ruin your apartment with all that…paint lying around.)
• How not to sound cool. “This duck is really succulent.”
• How not to impress your employer and old friend. While Thierry is hanging the portrait you made for him, Johnny, try not to force your tongue down his wife’s throat in the living room. Dirty deeds, and their done dirt cheap.

Weird bright spots in the murky abyss that was this movie

All those weird cameos and spot performances that had no bearing on the plot and really added nothing to the overall storyline, but that made you stop and go, “Oh, yeah, it’s him, alright. Look it says so in IMDB.” They were:

• Steve Buscemi as the OPP man who gets apprehended trying to steal a TV. He’s on work release, so this is about as ballsy as it gets. A guy who’s already in prison gets out for a few minutes and tries to steal some appliances. Where’s he even gonna put it? Nothing’s as good as they say it is, indeed.
• Aaron Neville as the local bartender. You read that right. He had a few lines even, and watched Johnny do a card trick.

• Marissa Tomei as Johnny’s dinner date. She was definitely arm-candy, a token +1 (gotta bring someone along right?) but man, that didn’t stop Johnny from ravaging Zandalee when he first gets out of her sight.

• That really creepy traitor from The Matrix movie (Joe Pantoliano) played Zandalee’s cross-dressing best friend who gave her smart-alec advice and tried on a lot of dresses at her boutique place of work.

Best lines from Johnny Collins

There weren’t many. But if you twisted my arm, I guess I’d say (with some tongue-in-cheek sarcasm…)

“If I can’t paint, everything just turns to shit.” Johnny explaining his art.

“Without creativity, without life, you are truly unable to go straight up the devil’s ass. Look him right in the face. Smile. Survive.” (Uh, ok, Johnny, whatever that means.)

“Why is that the baptists get the women and no booze, and the catholics gets the booze and no women.” Johnny speaking to a priest sitting next to him at the bar (where Aaron Neville pours).

Firsts for a Nicolas Cage character as Johnny Collins

• First sighting in New Orleans
• First time as a visual artist / construction worker
• First card trick
• First time having an affair with a friend’s wife (not counting Moonstruck since that was his brother’s fiance)
• First attempt to save a man from drowning in a swamp only to be bitten on the neck by the drowning man

Recurrences

• Second appearance with Judge Reinhold (see Brad’s Bud in Fast Times at Ridgemont High)
• Forcing himself on a woman creepily (Multiple)
• Being slapped across the face by a woman (Multiple)
• Throwing a tantrum (Multiple)
• Having a mullet (see Raising Arizona)

Summary:

Of all the bad Nicolas Cage movies I’ve seen so far, this one was by far the worst. From Johnny’s mane-like hair, to his crunchy goatee, to the gross way he approached seduction, to the tepid plot, to the boring characters, to the nonsensical story, there just wasn’t much to really appreciate about this film. It was hot garbage.

But when you are enlisted or volunteer for the Night’s Watch, you don’t really get to complain about the food, or the ice and cold, or the White Walkers making their silent trudge to the foot of your keep. You just have to stand up and watch. Because it is the vow that you’ve taken. And who else is going to do it?

I’m hoping some day this will all make sense, and I will get to hear the words spoken over my still form, “And now his watch has ended.”

But at least the watch of Zandalee has ended. (Thank God.)