The fact that Roger Ebert was so turned off by it is a damn good clue as to what's so great about this "movie." Remember when Dylan went electric in '65 at Newport and p***ed off everyone, especially the old tyme die hard folkies? Folk singers were supposed to be the voice of acceptance, inclusion, democracy. But there was righteous Pete Singer threatening to take an axe to the power cables to shut down Dylan's second set. Hypocrites. Bob's done it again with "Masked and Anonymous", a fake pseudo mock parable set in a far off exotic land that's much closer than we know. It's all done with a wink and a grin, and done very, very well.

Jessica Lange is absolutely amazing as an Industry Hustler, John Goodman is a riot and in the zone as a larger than life small time shmoozer. Jeff Bridges is, as always, Jeff Bridges! Penelope Cruz has never ever been so watchable, her cute accent exploited to the max. There's a crap load of supporting stars that just blaze in and out sight. Some you have to really squint to recognize, like Mickey Rourke as a slimy conniving politico. Giovanni Ribisi delivers a silver bullet monologue on the dilemmas of a revolutionary. And Bob Dylan is OK. OK may not sound like much, but with this high power, super star, mega talent mix, he's lucky to not be totally squashed. Bob's smart enough to say as little as possible, and it's a great contrast to all the uber-acting going on all around him.

Along with the very clever, maybe-too-smug dialog are some great unusual Dylan cover songs and a scant few divine "live" performances - Bob with a terribly good band, aiming for the throat and killing effortlessly. Transcendent moments, like lush oases on the desperately bleak American Film landscape, "Masked and Anonymous" is very cool refreshing entertainment.

Ever see one of those corny french philosophy lessons from the 60's that they like to call a film? This flick will help ya get over it.

OK, where to start? Depending on your disposition or frame of mind, this will either strike you as something brilliant or a complete waste of time. Maybe it could be both, I'm not sure. For one thing, it would help greatly if you've lived the last half century to get some takeaway from the picture. Dylan made his bones in the turbulent Sixties with songs that questioned dubious politics, war and even life itself. But what was the substance of his message? Most of the time he couldn't tell you because he was making music, music that reached out and conveyed an ethereal quality that was blowin' in the wind somewhere. Fans would get hung up on the meaning of an album cover when it was just an album cover. Sometimes it didn't get any deeper than that, but there was this hunger for some meaningful introspection that just wasn't there.

"Masked and Anonymous" is like that. With a backdrop of various Dylan tunes ("All of the songs are recognizable, even if they're not recognizable" - Uncle Sweetheart),the story meanders along hinting at a flash-point when the revolutionaries will turn everything upside down. But the fact is, everything's upside down anyway. Dylan himself looks like a Central American dictator, often back-dropped by characters looking like John Paul II, Ghandi and Abe Lincoln. The supporting cast is formidable, but they all seem to be in different movies. Of the bunch, Val Kilmer is brilliant as a visionary animal wrangler who deftly handles a poisonous coral snake and pretends to kill a rabbit. That it was a White Rabbit might have been another subtle attempt to bridge the past with the present, but then again, it might not.

The one thing I can unquestionably say I enjoyed about the picture was Dylan's rendition of 'Dixie' - very cool. I groaned slightly when the young girl did 'The Times They are a Changin' because it was so expected. I think though, if Dylan really wants to tell us something, he should just come out and say it.

Bob Dylan is certainly one of the great songwriters of the second half of the 20th century, or at least the most pleasurably enigmatic. His songs are poetic, but he doesn't consider himself one (or does, depending on what IMDb quote you read that contradicts another),and like Jean-Luc Godard his output from the 1960s is consistently groundbreaking and with a lot that holds up for the right fan. But this goes without saying one thing: he can't write a screenplay for s***. Sorry to curse, but it's apprporiate. The rules that might apply, if any, to screen writing can't be carried over into film-making. This is probably not a new thing to Dylan- he apparently wrote (and directed) a film in the 70s that almost didn't even get released in most sections till it was cut to just the songs- but he doesn't know how to keep from having his characters go on and on and on about this or that, making platitudes for something that is meant to make him (playing a character named Jack Fate, ho-ho) look all mystical and wise or just confused at not responding to anyone. If it is even written- sometimes it looks like the actors might be making it up as they go along- it is one of the worst screenplays of the decade.

It goes without saying that it isn't all Dylan's fault. In fact, him and co-writer/director Larry Charles (usually of the much more spot-on Curb Your Enthusiasm, Seinfeld and Borat terrain) do have the occasional scene or line that does work, in its own Dylan-esquire way (which is to say, I can't explain why it works except that a line is read truthfully or doesn't sound completel s****y). Plot: not much, except that Fate is let out of prison early in order to do a benefit concert as the bottom-of-the-barrel pick of John Goodman's indebted promoter and Jessica Lange's shallow TV producer, and is hounded by the press (or rather *a* press member, as a weird amalgam of Dylan's frayed connection with the press via Dude Jeff Bridges),while getting ready for a disaster in the making. This sounds substantial, but it isn't by that much. The compensation is that there are, of course, a lot of Bob Dylan fans out in Hollywood, so there's a lot of guest stars. Val Kilmer mumbles a lot, till making a great point about death and animals, while handling a snake. Giovanni Ribisi plays a quixotic Mexican rebel. Christian Slater's in for a couple of scenes. Don't forget about Like Wilson. And then there's Cheech Marin, and...oh, forget it.

Strange thing is, I didn't necessarily outright hate the movie. It's more complicated a reaction than that. Dylan seems to be making his flaws here as unique as he would accomplishments; seeing a scene like the one where he and Charles muck up a perfectly moving scene with a little black girl singing "Times They Are a Changin'" by the whim of a brutal mother making her little girl memorize all Jack Fate songs like a robot by suddenly putting over it a flashback of Fate getting roughed up years before with a mumbling voice-over, couldn't happen in any other movie. And, to be sure, when Dylan and his band plays, sans the incomprehensible Dylan singing, it's still pretty good. But the problem is less outright hatred of the material but disdain for the self-indulgence. You can tell the actors and the people behind the picture think there's grand statements being made behind what looks like a mysterious Dylan-esquire fable about greed and socio-political status in the media and music and culture. But behind it is really pandering to the ideas without questioning them. Maybe there is more than I saw in the material, yet is there enough time during the day to give another viewing to look deeper, unlike Dylan at his best with his songs? I'm not sure.