MOVIE REVIEWS : ‘STRAIGHT TO HELL’: IT’S NO LAUGHING MATTER

A virulent overconfidence seems to hit even the most talented film maker at one time or another, a contagious arrogance that says, “Damn plot, structure or continuity, gang; let’s make a movie!”

And so a clutch of talented cronies drink deep from the same well of inspiration; they tell one another how grotty/sexy/perfect they look in their costumes; they have a hilarious time, like kids playing with guns, shooting the movie and one another, and the result is an excruciating in-joke.

And so we get Alex Cox’s “Straight to Hell” (selected theaters), a supposed Sergio Leone parody shot on Leone’s own set in Almeria, Spain, which may be hilarious if you’re related to some member of the cast, but a thundering bore if you’re not.

Selected Cox alumni and figures from the worlds of music and movies, including Dennis Hopper; Joe Strummer, former lead singer of the Clash; Grace Jones; Elvis Costello; the Irish punk/folk band the Pogues; writer-director Jim Jarmusch, the shrill, doughy Courtney Love from “Sid & Nancy” and “Repo Man’s” great thundercloud Sy Richardson are reduced to milling around the dusty Spanish landscape becalmed by inertia and a lack of a coherent script from Cox and Dick Rude, another of the cast.

Since it is Cox, the film looks gorgeous (Tom Richmond, has been liberated from sand or slasher epics to do this rich, evocative camerawork) and there are individually memorable moments, mostly connected with music. The best comes as the women of the Pogues, joined eventually by the rest of the group, stand, in the movie’s Bunuel-parody set, and launch their absolutely straight version of “Danny Boy,” right at your heart. And a number by the doomed young hot dog vendor, Zander Schloss, “Karl’s Disco Weiner Deiner Haven,” has a certain crazed appeal.

But the rest of the film (whose R-rating is for bloodshed and language) is pale, clunking parody, done by performers falling over convulsively at how funny they are. In the press kit, Joe Strummer confides, “Yuppies are gonna hate it.”

Nonsense. Yuppies are gonna love it; they’ll think it’s satire.