SURVIVAL SKILLS KEEP `TIDELAND' AFLOAT.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

A couple of noteworthy performances -- namely, Jodelle Ferland as a child with remarkable survival skills and Jeff Bridges as a rotting corpse -- are essentially wasted in Terry Gilliam's indulgent, off-putting ``Tideland.''

It's yet another example of the undeniably imaginative filmmaker (``Time Bandits,'' ``Brazil,'' ``12 Monkeys'') frittering away a movie with ugly visuals and even more unpleasant behavior. It's all delivered in a screechy, disjointed narrative tone that becomes the cinematic equivalent of a ``Highway to Hell'' ringtone set much too loudly for public places.

We reference dinosaur rock because that's what Bridges' Noah character seems to be failing at. After his obnoxious groupie wife o.d.'s (mercifully, since she's played by Jennifer Tilly), he heads to the country with his bright but understandably addled daughter Jeliza-Rose (Ferland). They hole up in a rundown prairie farmhouse that's equal parts Andrew Wyeth, Norman Bates and Kurt Cobain's basement. That's where Jeliza-Rose fixes Daddy's last syringe, then covers his unmoving bulk in makeup and girly wigs as he grows increasingly unpretty.

If that's not creepy enough, there are the neighbor folk. Dell (Janet McTeer), an enraged, dreadlocked crone with demented buzzard eyes, and her childlike, semi-lobotomized brother Dickens (Brendan Fletcher), whose innocent playtime with Jeliza-Rose develops a really disturbing playing-house vibe.

Cheery and resourceful, Jeliza-Rose herself would be a marvel of peewee resilience if she didn't hold long conversations with her disembodied doll heads and a paranoid area squirrel. The girl is, understandably, bonkers; perhaps Gilliam, or source novel writer Mitch Cullin, wants to indicate that that's the only way she could possibly get along in a world of insane adults. But it just plays like an excuse for more overripe dysfunction, of which this film already has several barnfuls too much.

When not referencing ``Psycho,'' ``Tideland'' riffs on ``Alice in Wonderland'' to a wearying extent. Gilliam keeps his flights of fantasy to a relative minimum here, which sounds compassionate after the cacophonous, rampant make-believe that ruined his last film, ``The Brothers Grimm.'' This time, though, you wish you could join Jeliza-Rose in her dream worlds more often than Gilliam permits. Like the girl, we become desperate for anything to take us out of the movie's hideous, irritating reality.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

TIDELAND - Two and one half stars

(R: children in jeopardy, drug use, language, sex, violence)

Starring: Jodelle Ferland, Janet McTeer, Brendan Fletcher, Jeff Bridges, Jennifer Tilly.

Director: Terry Gilliam.

Running time: 2 hr.

Playing: Nuart, West L.A.

In a nutshell: Gilliam's indulgent, antic style turns this Southern Gothic about a little girl with an active imagination into a grotesque endurance test.

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Too much responsibility and a freaky family make young Jeliza-Rose (Jodelle Ferland) a little strange in ``Tideland.''