Not so great Dane.(Now Playing)(Movie Review)

Ears von Trier's Dogville is a movie so hermetic, so muddled, so ignorantly invective toward the United States that it has done the impossible: turn off even the most politically biased of American movie critics, just the sort of intellectual expatriates who normally lap up silly stunts such as this.

Shot entirely on a bare stage with few sets--chalk marks outline rooms and buildings, while actors mime walking through doors--Dogville takes place in a small Rocky Mountain "town" in the 1930s. When a woman (Nicole Kidman) flees there while on the run from gangsters, an idealistic writer (Paul Bettany) takes her in and convinces his neighbors to hide her. Their kindness soon turns toward exploitation, resulting in a half-baked, infantile statement about conformity and capitalism.

Tracing the movie's reception, from its love-it-or-hate it debut at the 2003 Cannes International Film Festival to its slow release across the United States this spring, has been a study in the limits of critical bias. If you feel that the political bent of reviewers often trumps the offensiveness of bad art, take heart. Dogville is so bad it has knocked off blinders.

There have been defenders, though most of them stress the importance of having a provocateur such as yon Trier at work rather than any merit to Dogville. I'd agree, to an extent--American movies could use fewer placaters and more troublemakers--yet it's a sure sign of a director in decline when his mere existence is praised more than his output.

More revealing have been the negative reviews, and not just the ones from those who have always hated von Trier. Amidst the boos have been voices you would expect to be offering praise. David Denby of the New Yorker, for instance, called the film "pedantic, obtuse and unwatchable," as well as "inept avant-gardism." Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader, who appears to be physically incapable of writing a review without making a negative reference to the ...