by CHRIS BARRY

Aliens, a fat chick doing flips on a tight rope, a little slapstick comedy, a little torture accompanied by Judy Garland's "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," a touch of poignancy... Damn, from the sound of things you'd think South Korea's Jeong Jun-hwan's whacked-out sci-fi fantasy, Save the Green Planet, was the Asian bastard child of Buñuel's Un chien andalou or something. And while there's definitely a little surrealism at play here, for the most part this little oddity of a movie has more in common with the 1990 Kathy Bates/James Caan vehicle Misery than anything those kooky Europeans were dreaming up in the '20s.

Nutty crystal meth enthusiast and beekeeper (Shin Ha-kyun) is on a mission to rid the earth of aliens who, he believes, are planning on bringing about doomsday come the next lunar eclipse. A murderer perhaps, but no misanthrope, he takes it upon himself to kidnap and torture wealthy industrialist (Baek Yun-shik), a guy whom he's certain is the aliens' representative on Earth. Soon enough, a disgraced Bmovie- esque detective, through a truly incomprehensible feat of deductive reasoning, tracks our boy to his mountainside retreat, starts asking a few too many questions and... Ka-pow, next thing you know he's being served up to the protagonist's dog.

Now while I certainly don't want to give away the hook here, let's just say that perhaps the good beekeeper isn't as crazy as he appears. Maybe he's on to something with all this alien invasion stuff? Maybe, as Donald ("I don't do quagmires") Rumsfeld will tell you, a little brutal torture here and there is not only fun, but in the interest of the greater good. Or, perhaps, it's simply so gratuitous that you wind up desensitized within the first half hour of the movie and discover you couldn't really care if any of these characters get giant steam-spouting steel dildos shoved up their assholes or not.

An ambitious effort, Save the Green Planet deserves props for the occasional arguably original moment, but far too often delves into way-over-the-top ridiculousness to merit the kind of praise it's been getting on the festival circuit.

Save the Green Planet opens at Cinéma Du Parc Friday, Sept. 9

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