This movie could have been edited down 20 minutes easy. And most of them don't have any real pay-off for the plot or the characters. Some of these flashbacks are disturbing (such as the rape or her father's murder), some are just silly. We see Cage and Dern make love half a dozen times and there are many flashbacks that go into her family's history and their connections with Santos. I thought the pacing was really slow in the first half. Then there are the horrific scenes (such as when they come across the car accident) peppered throughout that are compelling, but don't move the plot. Was the banter between Dern's mom and Harry Dean Stanton supposed to make me laugh? I couldn't pin down if the film was a satire, and if it was, what was it satirizing? If the humor was just absurdist, it seemed kinda lazy.
There were moments that I think were supposed to be funny (such as some of the gory scenes like where the dog left the bank carrying the hand in its mouth or some of the dialogue between the characters), but they didn't do anything for me. However, I didn't find anything really funny in this movie.
Lynch's movies often have shifting tones- look no further than the black comedy of Eraserhead or Twin Peaks. On the other hand, I felt like the tone was inconsistent in a way that kept bringing me out of the movie. On one hand it is an Americana road trip movie (through the surreal lens of Lynch) starring a very intense Nicolas Cage (my favorite kind of Cage) and the always amazing Laura Dern. I'm going through David Lynch's filmography (only movie I have left to see of his is Straight Story) and Wild at Heart has left me the most conflicted.
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