A small-time waster fresh out of prison kidnaps a girl and forces her to pretend to be his wife in an attempt to fool his dysfunctional parents into believing he's living the good life. Buffalo '66 is trying oh-so-hard for "indie chic". Writer-director Vincent Gallo essentially presents us with a love story for emotional retards, as his "hero" Billy has clearly been emotionally scarred by his upbringing at the hands of his Denver Broncos obsessed mother and self absorbed, emotionally distant father. It's a nice idea and I'm sure female fashionistas who fancy themselves as preferring "troubled" and "complex" men (as long as they dress like rock stars and have perfect bone structure, of course...) to jock types think it's the best thing since sliced bread. The biggest problem is with Gallo himself; he is clearly such a self obsessed narcissist that instead of a traumatized, insecure victim, he comes across as an obnoxious, arrogant asshole and as such it seems deeply unlikely that such an appealing creature as Christina Ricci would have anything to do with him. It has some nice visual touches and I certainly warmed to the film more and more as it went, but in the end it all seems just a little too pretentious and a little too unconvincing to be the work of genius that Gallo himself clearly thinks it is.

First time director Vincent Gallo delivers an imaginative, comical tale of a social misfit who gets out of prison after a five year sentence, only to go home to yet another prison overseen by his barely socialized parents portrayed by Anjelica Huston and Ben Gazzara. Gallo plays Billy Brown who spends the first part of the film in desperate search of a bathroom in dingy, cold Buffalo, and eventually wanders into a tap dance studio to relieve himself. He ends up kidnapping a young woman named Layla(Christina Ricci) from her tap class to use as the right girl to show off to his twisted mother and father who may or may not be there or care much for their troubled son. This film is a bit difficult to summarize in a brief review as there is a lot going on between Billy and his parents, Layla and her parents, Billy's odd friends who give clues as to how he could wind up in prison with their misplaced sense of being and distorted portrayals that aren't so clearly defined, and Billy's relationship with all of the aforementioned.