When I finally decided to watch LAUREL CANYON, I thought that this would be a good movie. I mean, just look at the cast, right? But then in hindsight, I should have known better, simply just by *really* looking at the cast: Christian Bale and Natascha McElhone should have told me to expect a quasi-disaster, with Bale having appeared in a long string of terrible films (like REIGN OF FIRE, EQUILIBRIUM, etc) and McElhone having an almost identical number of crappy projects, like KILLING ME SOFTLY or REVELATIONS, or the half-baked SOLARIS remake. From now on, if I see either actors headlining a movie, I will lower my expectations quite considerably. But the two actors are not to blame for the complete crappiness of LAUREL CANYON. The director, the script and the producers who greenlighted this stillborn project are first and foremost to blame here.<br /><br />The story sorta had potential (behind the scenes of the music industry) but I've never seen a movie shoot itself in the foot on so many occasions as this film. It's almost unreal. Whatever chance this film had to turn up good was repeatedly destroyed by the kooky decisions made for the film:<br /><br />1 - The Christian Bale and Kate Beckinsale characters are so annoying and unbelievably fake that the whole drama of the story, which weighs on their attitude towards the people they have to live with and their new dwelling, falls apart from the get-go. Those characters aren't real people but just types.<br /><br />2 - Kate Beckinsale's acting. But I don't blame her for such a bad bit of acting. Her character is so ridiculous, being a quasi-frigid woman who turns into a free thinking woman who's willing to have sex with her boyfriend's mother(!), that I don't think any actor, including Meryl Streep, could have given some gravitas to this joke of a character.<br /><br />3 - Natascha McElhone's accent. Just awful. One of the worst accents I've ever heard, even beating out Rosanna Arquette's awful accent in THE WHOLE NINE YARDS. No one noticed how bad the accent was? Was everyone in denial or asleep at the wheel? Why even an accent?!?!<br /><br />4 - The story. 100% predictable and devoid of anything interesting, including drama (the scene where Bale and Beckinsale scream at each other and then cry is laugh inducing). The scenes with Frances bitching over the phone with the female record producer are trite and serve no purpose at all. <br /><br />5 - The music. The music the band plays is so bad, certainly the ballad, that I had to fast forward through these scenes. If you're making a movie about the music industry, please get some good music first because the whole reality of the film falls apart once we hear the crappy music.<br /><br />Those are the five major points where the film actually shot itself in the foot for no reason, as those points could have easily been fixed before they started filming. The only redeeming feature in LAUREL CANYON is Kate's beauty. She's really gorgeous. But she should really choose better film projects in the future.