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With this tale of money, greed and the wildly fluctuating universe of current social and sexual revolution, co-writer/director Spike Lee doesn't want to make She Hate Me a film; he wants it to be the cinematic equivalent of a cattle prod.

He wants to provoke.

It's an argument that thrives within artistic film communities (and within circles of every art form, for that matter). Is it more important to make a "good" film or an "important" one? Sure, Sideways and Million Dollar Baby were better movies from 2004, but as movie criticism of the last few decades has shown us, hindsight doesn't necessarily recognize artistic achievement as much as it does notoriety.

Chloe Sevigny has given some great performances over the last few years, but she gave Vincent Gallo a blowjob in The Brown Bunny. When you hear her name, you're going to remember that first. Fahrenheit 9/11 was by no means the best documentary made last year, but its plainly audacious aims are definitely what will ring true about non-fiction film in 2004.

She Hate Me belongs to this latter category of film, a strain of cinema that is significantly more interested in pissing you off or shocking you with (mostly sexual) frankness or perversion than engaging you dramatically. The story - a rich Enron-type VP loses his job (he blows the whistle on the company and is therefore completely conspired against - 'the man' at work) and decides to keep up his excessive and lucrative lifestyle by impregnating rich lesbians who have neither the time, tolerance or capability to have children in any other capacity.

It's a fascinating set-up for a picture. During the film's first thirty minutes, it instills a surprisingly cold and wondrously effective sense of dread and impotence in the corporate world - for a movie that is promoted as a sexy romp with as many busty (and topless) women as possible, the fact that She Hate Me starts with such a comparatively dark and introspective prelude gives it a unique and intriguing air.

Yet once Lee's parade of lesbians gets going, over the course of the movie's next two hours (it runs a monstrously bloated 138 minutes), it steadily and systematically loses any steam it ever had.

However, Spike Lee's intention of engaging is so far down the totem pole of She Hate Me that it almost seems incidental. She Hate Me is a movie of concepts, of ideas and theories that vacillate between astute social commentary and outrageously offensive homophobia.

But, see - the fact that I used those terms in this review chalk up a success to Spike's film. He doesn't give a shit whether I have affinity with the characters and situations in his film. He doesn't want to present his lesbian characters as Jane Goodall anthropological specimens, he wants to chop up these concepts of "lesbianism," "greed," and "sexual morality" and dissect them in front of us - with all the blood and guts and shit that comes with a destructive artistic surgery such as this one.

And She Hate Me is a raucously dirty movie. Not dirty in the jacker kind of way - though the film has more than its fair share of female nudity - but in the way it offers ideas and plot situations that are so broad-stroked and full of holes that they can't help but make viewers feel violently angry at their lack of consistency or intelligence.

What are some examples?

However, this is the point I'm trying to make: Spike Lee pissed me off with She Hate Me, and seeing as that's what he meant to do, I earnestly give him a round of applause (most directors don't connect ideologically or emotionally with an audience whatsoever). I consider his filmmaking styles to be on the slide - I don't think he's made a good film since the under- appreciated Girl 6 - and the lack of integrity in his storytelling is as patronizing and redundantly irresponsible as the villains he goes out of his way to demonize (the last image of the credits before the film starts is of George W. Bush's face on a three- dollar bill), but dammit if he doesn't jumpstart his viewers here.

Story? Characters? Symbolism? Themes? All these are contrived, embarrassingly underdeveloped, and infantile in She Hate Me. However, I've never seen a film as closed-minded, blindly conspiratorial and disjointed as this one. It literally belongs in a category of its own.

Many critics called it one of the worst films of 2004 - and they're right - but She Hate Me isn't a film that tries to receive accolades from the film community. It's about using cinema as a technique to light a fire under peoples' asses.

You will remember this one, for better and (most probably) for worse.

The Video: How Does The Disc Look?

I'll give She Hate Me this: it looks fantastic. Presented in its original theatrical aspect ratio of Anamorphic 1.85:1, the exceptionally wide-ranging color scheme and the excellent definition of the film's visuals are represented here wonderfully. Hues are wonderfully bounded and presented without blur or smear, line quality is crisp and consistent, and black levels are robust and thick. Even the film's more moderate - and less saturated - sequences have a lovely hue to them. There's a solid display of quality control apparent within this transfer. Excellent.

The Audio: How Does The Disc Sound?

The Dolby Digital 5.1 track here is equally impressive. Lee does some crazy things with his mix here, and this provocation and audacity lend the film a wonderful aural edge. Dialogue has been recorded and presented well - there are a few instances of peaks (mostly during scenes involving screaming), but they're few and far between - and the film has a lovely oeuvre of sound effects and atmospherics that infiltrate both front speakers and surrounds. One complaint is that Terence Blanchard's score is incorporated far too loud in the mix. It drowns out almost everything else going on. But most of the time, this is a fine mix, a booming, expansive track that adds a great degree to the film's impact.

Also included are French, Portuguese and Spanish subtitles, and English closed captions.

Supplements: What Goodies Are There?

Spike Lee's screen-specific audio commentary is a bit of a bust. I was hoping the guy would dive head-on into explaining the ins- and-outs of the themes of his critically maligned film, but he keeps most of these perspectives at bay. He'll offer a good anecdote every once in a while, but most of the time he's either absent (this track goes silent very frequently) or plain in his description of facets of the film. Not great.

The ten-minute behind-the-scenes featurette included here is - surprisingly - even more informative than the commentary track. In a few interview snippets with cast and crew we learn that most people signed on for this thing simply because of Spike's reputation (not for subject matter) and that Spike simply was trying to make a movie about sex, greed, money and politics. Okay.

We also get nine minutes' worth of deleted scenes. Some of these are interesting, but seeing as the actual film is outrageously overlong, these feel like an even further beating of a dead horse.

Rounding out the edition are previews for: She Hate Me, Baadassss! , Warriors of Heaven and Earth, Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War, Doing Hard Time, Trois: The Escort, Are We There Yet? , and a promo for the She Hate Me soundtrack.

Exclusive DVD-ROM Features: What happens when you pop the disc into your PC?

We get a simple weblink to the official website of the film.

Final Thoughts