Name: Retro Film Review: Destiny Turns on the Radio (1995)
Item: Destiny Turns on the Radio
Rating: 15
Author: @drax

(source: tmdb.org)

There are many ways to earn fame in Hollywood. Yet there are also many ways to waste such fame. Quentin Tarantino made one of the more interesting choices in the latter. While most of Hollywood's greats squandered their reputation by succumbing to their vanity or greed in participating in major cinema disasters, Tarantino decided to borrow his reputation of "indie" guru to his less fortunate colleagues and appear in low budget comedies. In 1995 one of such films was supernatural comedy Destiny Turns on the Radio, directed by Jack Baran.

Title character is Johnny Destiny (played by Quentin Tarantino), mysterious man who drives across Nevada desert and agrees to pick-up protagonist, Julian Goddard (played by Dylan McDermott). Goddard has just escaped from prison and wants to get to Las Vegas where he is supposed to pick his share of loot from the bank robbery. When he gets there, Thoreau (played by James Le Gros), his partner in crime, informs him that the money is stolen. To make things worse, Goddard's former girlfriend Lucille (played by Nancy Travis) now lives with casino mogul Tuerto (played by James Belushi). While police closes in, Goddard would learn two things about Johnny Destiny - he stole the money and he is actually a supernatural being, some sort of embodiment of luck.

Like many pretentious 1990s "indie" filmm akers, director Jack Baran was convinced that using pop culture references, some pseudo-spiritual mumbo jumbo and Tarantino in supporting role would result in instant cult classic. Scriptwriters Robert Ramsey and Matthew Stone, on the other hand, believed that making the story, characters and plot incomprehensible would result in "coolness". Unfortunately for them, they forgot that this novelty had worn off during the second season of Twin Peaks. To make things even worse, Baran shows that he is much better producer than director - his lack of directorial skills results in terribly slow pace and almost two hours of utter bore. The acting is also bad - McDermott is terribly bland in the role of protagonist, while people like Nancy Travis and James Belushi sleepwalk through their roles. Destiny Turns on the Radio lacks even something that comedy should have - humour. It is very unlikely that the audience would laugh at any lame jokes on the screen. The only joke that works in this film is on the audience - Tarantino with his evil grin looks like he had fun imagining his devotees coming to cinema and expecting something like Pulp Fiction. RATING: 2/10 (-)

(Note: The text in its original form was posted in Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.movies.reviews on December 10th 2002)