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One of the most interesting conservative writers around, Michael Brendan Dougherty, takes a few moments away from his American Conservative day job to renounce his fizzled love affair with the film Magnolia:

It's really not "mind-blowing" or "amazing." Everyone drops the f-bomb as frequently as the screenwriter/director. The film emphatically does not deliver on the expectations set by it's incredible opening. It embraces the failure by covering the whole of downtown L.A. in frogs. And I'm supposed to be satisfied with one tear streaked smile at the end?

More here. Lord, I'd be lying if I said I didn't love the frogs and some other aspects of this movie, but Dougherty is right: There's a whole lot of promise in the premise scuttled in favor of a ridiculously large ensemble cast. Somebody at the studio should've clipped Anderson's wings a bit and told him he had great material for three or four dramas that equaled a convoluted mess when press into one.