FOR EIGHT YEARS, no one heard anything about Harmony Korine, the filmmaker whose movies had a knack for provoking equal measures of revulsion and acclaim. After the 1999 release of his Dogme 95-inspired Julien Donkey-Boy, Korine gave up filmmaking and descended into heroin addiction and disillusionment. He went to Paris, where he found inspiration for his latest movie, Mister Lonely, a story of emotional isolation that seems more than a little autobiographical.

The son of a documentary filmmaker, Korine was discovered at 22 by photographer Larry Clark and wrote the screenplay for Clark's Kids, a look at the sex- and drug-filled escapades of Manhattan teens. But it was his own directing debut, Gummo, in 1997 that made him notorious. The movie was a lurid collection of vignettes depicting white-trash residents of tornado-stricken Xenia, Ohio. Director Werner Herzog claimed a shot in Gummo of bacon stuck to a bathroom wall "knocked me off my chair." Roger Ebert rhapsodized that Korine is "the real thing, an innovative and gifted filmmaker whose work forces us to see on his terms."

Well, yes, it does. But that doesn't mean it's good. His films are amateurish, grotesque, incoherent and plodding, managing the incredible feat of being both outrageous and boring. That said, Mister Lonely, which Korine wrote with his brother Avi, is something of a stylistic departure. Opening with a slow-motion shot of a lone bicyclist set to the saccharine Bobby Vinton song "Mister Lonely," the movie is about an unhappy Michael Jackson impersonator (Diego Luna of Y Tu Mamá También) who goes to live in a commune in the Scottish Highlands inhabited by celebrity impersonators.

It's not a good film, but it has a sweetness unexpected from the director who once tried making a movie of himself provoking real street fights to the point of near death. The Jackson impersonator, who laments in his narration that he has "always wanted to be someone else," moonwalks for spare change on the streets of Paris. He performs at an old folks' home, where he urges the residents to live forever. "Don't die, don't die!" he chants with endearing absurdity.

Into this scene glides an ethereal Marilyn Monroe impersonator (Samantha Morton), who invites Michael to join her and her husband, a Charlie Chaplin impersonator (Denis Lavant), at the commune. Michael eagerly joins the bucolic group that includes replicas of the Pope (James Fox), the Queen ('60s icon Anita Pallenberg), Madonna (Melita Morgan), Abe Lincoln (Richard Strange), James Dean (Joseph Morgan), the Three Stooges, and so on.

A second, irrelevant plot involves a group of Panamanian nuns who discover, on an airplane mission to drop food, the power of miracles through skydiving. (Their priest is played by Werner Herzog, who often acts in Korine's movies.)

Not much happens in Mister Lonely. Were it not for the endearing presence of Morton and Luna, it would be almost completely intolerable. The commune's sheep get sick, so there is a mass slaughter mourned by the fake celebrities; the effect is like Hud remade by Andy Warhol, though a lot less interesting than that sounds.

The movie's indifferent production values and borderline ineptitude evoke an older style of underground movie, before indie films became slick studio products. Korine, now 35, is himself a throwback, which may be why the subject of Michael Jackson appealed to him; it's the story of a reclusive outsider whose cultural relevance has passed, and who finds grownup life intolerable.

Occasionally, Korine stumbles into a moment of beauty. There's a surprisingly touching scene, late in the movie, in which a collection of eggs Michael has painted to resemble his commune friends magically comes to life and sings. Michael talks with the egg "Marilyn," who helps relieve his existential sadness. It's just one scene, following nearly two hours of meaningless boredom, but it suggests what Korine, with some artistic discipline, could achieve. — Pamela Zoslov

Mister Lonely: Cedar Lee Theater, 2163 Lee Rd., Cleveland Heights, 440-564-2034, clevelandcinemas.com.

Get Smart

Since Steve Carell is so much funnier playing assholes (see Carell's nonpareil wanker Michael Scott on The Office for strong evidence of this), I'm not sure why he keeps getting cast as menschy good guys. Last summer, Carell headlined Evan Almighty, a quasi sequel to Jim Carrey's Bruce Almighty, wherein Carell played an unctuous twit who, in the film's funniest bit, got his long overdue comeuppance. But when Carell played that same character four years later, his jerkiness quotient had been toned down to such an alarming extent that Evan Baxter became a spineless wimp. No wonder the movie tanked. I mention this in preamble to my Get Smart review because Carell seemed like ideal casting for blundering supersleuth Maxwell Smart. The problem is that scenarists Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember have rewritten Smart to be sweet, kind and supremely competent. Max's edge, and a good chunk of his personality, have been erased along with the oaf's delusional self-confidence.

Framed as a superhero-type "origin" movie, "Smart 2.0" invents a backstory to explain how Max went from being a CONTROL wonk to becoming Agent 99's Inspector Clouseau-ish partner. While the supporting characters are all pretty much the same (Dwayne Johnson's Agent 23 is a gung-ho doofus; Chief, ably impersonated by Alan Arkin, remains easily flustered), the chemistry between Max and Agent 99 has been inexplicably, pointlessly tampered with. If Barbara Feldon's 99 was a combination rocket scientist/Bond Girl who always let Don Adams' Max think he was boss in order to preserve the patriarchal hierarchy (this was the '60s after all), Anne Hathaway's take-charge 99 refuses to suffer fools gladly, especially poor Max. Feldon's 99 seemed genuinely enamored with Max even at his most boorish which, come to think of it, was most of the time. Hathaway's more evolved Agent 99 is a strictly business undercover op who doesn't even seem to like Max very much. Of course, if Carell had been allowed to do what he does best (i.e., play Max as a Michael Scott-type dickhead), Get Smart could have struck comedy gold. — Milan Paurich

Opens Friday areawide

The Foot Fist Way

MTV Films and Paramount seemed to have been hoping Napoleon Dynamite lightning could strike twice with the release of this similarly regionally flavored, low-budget, not-for-all-tastes, no-name comedy — no name, that is, unless you count sports-spoof regular Will Ferrell as one of the producers. The Foot Fist Way tackles martial arts as it is observed at innumerable tacky strip-mall dojos across this land, and if the results aren't "flippin' sweet!," the flashes of recognition and empathy can still put the beat-down on that over-inflated Karate Kid sequel in which Daniel-san and Mr. Miyagi went to Japan. An apt alternate title would be Bad Sensei. With the legend-in-his-own-mind ego, f-word vocabulary and mustache — picture your least favorite high school gym coach — Fred Simmons (Danny McBride) is a chunky bubba running a tae kwon do academy franchise in a Southern suburb, promising students from kindergartners up to seniors the self-confidence and enlightenment that mastery of the martial arts supposedly confers. But the dude is a, what is the Shaolin temple expression?

You wouldn't want to spend any time in a room with a character like Fred, even if the floors were covered by rubber mats (it makes all the difference that the unknown McBride took the unsavory lead, instead of a recognizable audience-pleasing comedian like Ferrell). Still, as the jerk absorbs one body blow after another from life, you feel for him and the way that, in spite of himself, he comes through as a mentor figure to his disciples in the end. Director/co-writer Jody Hill has a funny supporting part as a fifth-degree black belt poseur who dresses and acts like he's ready for combat in The Matrix, and probably anyone who ever donned a gi and got driven by mom to practice mortal combat in a storefront will relate to something here. Parents of Mutant Ninja Turtle fans should know The Foot Fist Way really earns its R-belt from the MPAA for language, drugs and vulgarity. — Charles Cassady Jr.

The awkward teenage years are even more angsty and precarious for Argentine high schooler Alex (Ines Efron) in XXY. Born with both male and female sex organs, Alex's hermaphrodite status has given the poor kid an off-the-charts identity crisis. To help protect their adored only child from the cruelties of the outside world, Alex's marine biologist father (Ricardo Darin from Nine Queens) and mother have moved him/her to a remote fishing village in Uruguay. But it's hard to keep a secret like Alex's for very long. Although he/she has been living as a girl thanks to regular hormone treatments, Alex needs to choose a gender and stick with it. A visit from some old family friends — pop Ramiro (German Palacios) is, conveniently, a plastic surgeon - helps bring the matter of Alex's eventual decision to a head. And the family's gangly teenage son, Alvaro (Martin Piroyanski), only complicates things further. In spite of their obvious physical differences (and, uh, similarities), he and Alex quickly develop an impractical mutual crush on each other.

Writer-director Lucia Puenzo's psychological drama was a big hit on the festival circuit (Cannes, Toronto, Sundance, Cleveland) even though it's not a particularly easy movie to warm up to. If Puenzo is to be applauded for not making Alex an easy object of pity (or ridicule), the film might have worked better if we were at least able to empathize with its protagonist. Yet, despite uniformly strong performances (the excellent Darin is particularly good as Alex's understandably rattled dad) XXY hardly qualifies as a must-see. Unless, of course, the subject matter speaks directly to you somehow. — MP

XXY: 7:20 p.m. Thursday, June 19 and 9:10 p.m. Sunday, June 22 at Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque, 11141 East Blvd., 216-421-7450.