Critic Reviews

It's original and poetic, and if you see it you will probably remember scenes from it a year from now, because it's not really like anything else. It's very much its own thing.

Sometimes a bit of befuddlement is exactly what you need. That's the driving idea behind writer-director Steven Peros' off-kilter, off-the-beaten path comedy, which owes a lot to 1980s indie cinema.

Exhibits stray instances of intrigue and wit, and makes nostalgic hay with its enshrinement of old-timers Pippa Scott and H.M. Wynant, but ultimately suggests a too-writerly, over-padded "Twilight Zone" episode.

Steven Peros's character study is clearly designed as an homage to vintage Tinseltown mystique, so it's a pity that the old guard would have been mortified by Peros's rudimentary craftsmanship and Temtchine's thudding performance as a walking metaphor for L.A.'s young, A-list–averse idealists.

Rife with classic-cinema shoutouts, the film is a cutesy, toothless variation on "Mulholland Drive," one whose attempts to pay tribute to movie magic are ultimately undercut by stagey aesthetics and narrative theatricality.

This often risible head-scratcher never cracks the surface of its muddled ambitions, largely wasting its iconic settings on a series of motley interactions, Tinseltown trivia and self-conscious philosophizing.

From its "once upon a time" beginning to the anticlimactic end, Footprints remains fatally lodged in La-La Land.

To give credit where it's due, Footprints makes a game attempt at creating a love letter to a place that may be inherently unlovable: Hollywood Boulevard, in all its faded glory and present-day Hooters/Hard Rock Cafe tackiness.

Peros probably intends Footprints to be an homage to Hollywood's Golden Age. But the script's so incoherent and the acting so amateurish that it makes the worst old-time Hollywood B-flick seem like "Citizen Kane."

The barely coherent Footprints seems bent on erasing any nostalgia one might have for Hollywood's heyday.