What Did 'The Canyons' Critics Say About Lindsay?

Landing a role in a movie like The Canyons was the best shot Lindsay Lohan has had at a comeback since she became someone who needs to have a comeback. For a widely missed starlet with little to no acting ability and a huge base of fans that would fall over themselves to see her do something — anything — worthwhile, a self-referential role in an edgy, high-profile indie movie should have been the key to redemption.

In Paul Schrader's highly anticipated (or feared, depending on where you're standing) The Canyons, fallen, jaded Hollywood actress Lindsay Lohan plays a fallen, jaded Hollywood actress named Tara. Her wanna-be director boyfriend is played by porn star James Deen — who also managed to get strictly horrible reviews, by the way — and the two lead the story through dramatic rivalries, betrayals, and a poorly-lit foursome.

Any critic who attended this movie's world premiere last night at Lincoln Center awoke this morning with a million terrible, hilarious things to say about it. Every one of them is having a much better day than Lindsay, who hopefully doesn't bother to read her own reviews. Here are some of the best summaries of the critics' collective feelings about The Canyons:

The plot of The Canyons, in which dead-eyed young people hover around Hollywood with zero interest in the quality of the work, takes [its] gloomy prophesy to heart. But instead of commenting on the vapidity of the film industry, Paul Schrader's miscast, poorly executed and utterly soulless drama is an example of the failing art form it seeks to indict. [...] Lohan is as bland and unfocused as the material. — Eric Kohn, IndieWire

Forget the rumors of explicit sex — I’ve seen high school hygiene films that are steamier than this snoozer, notwithstanding the underwhelming “mainstream’’ debut of popular porn star James Deen, who shouldn’t give up his day job. [...] Hard-partying Lohan, who at 27 often looks like she’s going on 50 thanks to the eyeball-gougingly ugly, harshly lit digital photography and heavy makeup, plays the girlfriend of Deen, a wealthy Malibu trust funder who is financing a low-budget slasher flick. — Lou Lumenick, The New York Post

The banal script, from “American Psycho” novelist Bret Easton Ellis, feels like a Schrader parody. One effort at “Gigolo”-like neon-lit perversion looks more like an orgy in a laser-tag park. — Joe Neumaier, Daily News

Among this onslaught of witty anti-Lohan diatribes, Scott Foundas at Variety stands alone as her one tireless supporter, or possibly as the only professional critic who got this movie:

Lohan may not go as deep or as far as Brando, but with her puffy skin, gaudy hoop earrings and thick eye makeup, there’s a little-girl-lost quality to the onetime Disney teen princess that’s very affecting. Whenever she’s onscreen, she projects a sense of just barely holding on to that precarious slide area in the shadow of the Hollywood sign.

All right, Scott — we'll give it a shot, but we're not promising not to cry when Lindsay Lohan takes her top off and all we see are sad Parent Trap flashbacks.

Here's the trailer, in case you wanted to see: