I much prefer Blue Velvet, maybe because it was new and shocking and original, whereas here Lynch seems to be copying himself, Nic Cage seems to be doing his faux-Elvis 'look at me all the time" schtick and Laura Dern just seems lost. The camera work is lovely, but to what end? It's kind of an empty story when all is said and done. As Emanuel Levy says in his book Cinema of Outsiders, "the shocks have little resonance, and the weirdness is trivial- the pictures hyperkinetic wildness is mostly on the surface, the images are elaborately conceived but meaningless." <br /><br />