By Dennis Harvey

photo by Alan Spearman/Crunk Pictures

Unless you were a first-time filmmaker getting lucky, an agent or distributor frantically doling out luck, or a corporate shill glorying in the amped-up celebrity swag hunt, 2005 was the year Park City cinema entered the realm of "feh." You know, that unmagical land bordered on one side by the kingdom of Just Pretty Good, on the other by Lower Craptastica. In between, the peaks and valleys alike were barely separated enough to force a sweat, though visitors did demonstrate gold-medal exertion trying to get into their corresponding parties. Genuine excitement of an artistic rather than acquisitional nature was way harder to catch than the flu.

The fuck-art-let's-dance tenor, accidental or no, seemed to drag the festival kicking and screaming – or maybe just grousing and whimpering – into a midlife crisis oddly reflective of the postelection mood. Minority disappointment did little to impact the oblivious majority, which was too busy chasing entrée to films Miramax picked up and the Snoop Dogg concert to notice.

Robert Redford's usual thoughtful opening spiel was unusually qualified, pondering whether Sundance might outgrow its original purpose, hometown, and any audience not flying in from Burbank. (Among the latter was "Feeeeed meeee" monster-princess Paris Hilton, whose showing up to be pampered struck many as the event's fourth horseman of the apocalypse.) There were complaints that the festival was excessively "front-loaded," with an overwhelming percentage of premieres scheduled for its first half – accommodating all those time-is-money biz types – and those few debuting later at a distinct disadvantage.

It was hard not to interpret animation duo JibJab's much-hated festival trailers, in which the word "independent" dissolved into "inept," as a belittling chortle at the very idea of working outside the mainstream. Like, what do filmmakers think this is, the '60s? (Although I'm sure Hilton made time for the Barbara Kopple seminar.) One panel discussion asked if activist documentaries can avoid preaching to the converted, a depressing question with a depressing answer. It was unfortunate that the two narrative features that sounded most radical and incendiary – Guerrilla News Network cofounder Stephen Marshall's This Revolution, shot à la Medium Cool at the 2004 Republican National Convention, and Travis Wilkerson's agitprop drama Who Killed Cock Robin? – provoked near-universal shrugs of artistic disappointment.

To an extreme extent, Sundance 2005 exhibited a familiar dynamic: nonfiction good, fiction bad. Only this time there were fewer revelations in the first category, and a deeper shade of mediocrity permeated the second. The best documentaries simply had great individual stories to tell: Jeff Feuerzeig's The Devil and Daniel Johnston (which also plays this week at the San Francisco Independent Film Festival), that of its schizophrenic alt-rock cult star; Ring of Fire: The Emile Griffith Story, the extraordinary rise and fall of the '60s welterweight champion.

Audience favorite Murderball focuses on stars of the brutal quadriplegic-soccer circuit. I have limited tolerance for suck-my-dick-no-you-suck-my-dick jock assholedom, with or without wheelchairs. Dick-sucking proved more insightful in Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey's Inside Deep Throat, an overview of that breakthrough porn classic's impact on its creators and on society in general.

Several documentary highlights had local roots – not a big surprise. Among them was Jenni Olson's gorgeous landscape meditation on death, love, and intoxicating San Francisco itself, The Joy of Life. Somewhat lost in the doc competition jostle, Mark Becker's tender, beautiful Romántico chronicles the lives of two illegal-immigrant Mission District mariachi singers. And across town at biggest-little-fest Slamdance, Taggart Siegel's The Real Dirt on Farmer John got much love for its portrait of a Midwestern hippie earth father holding out against all odds.

But narrative features at Sundance were in a sorry state, excepting such very-good-but-not-great entries as Noah Baumbach's The Squid and the Whale, Ira Sach's beautifully detailed if leisurely 40 Shades of Blue, and Mike Mills's eccentric adolescent roller coaster Thumbsucker. More typical were the letdown receptions of highly anticipated efforts by Rebecca Miller (The Ballad of Jack and Rose), Steve Buscemi (Lonesome Jim), Craig Lucas (The Dying Gaul), John Maybury (The Jacket), Kevin Bacon (Loverboy), and Hal Hartley (The Girl from Monday).

Among midnight-category titles I'd been looking forward to, the Strangers with Candy movie proved only just as good as the hit-and-miss TV series – when it should have been better. Crispin Hellion Glover's What Is It?, starring folks with Down syndrome surrounded by Nazi motifs and other overcalculated outrages, proved 68 very long minutes indeed.

What offended more were the festival's baldly commercial entries, many showcased as pseudo-prestigious premieres. Hustle and Flow struck many as a skilled but formulaic "rap Rocky," despite its $9 million Paramount buy and audience award. The incredibly crass, witless, pederastic "dark comedy" Pretty Persuasion, with Evan Rachel Wood as a 15-year-old Beverly Hills Cleopatra, likewise got snarfed up for big bucks.

That film's retch factor was trumped only by veteran hack Randall Miller's Marilyn Hotchkiss Ballroom Dancing and Charm School, the kind of arm-twisting, laughter-and-tears ensemble smarmfest that makes you wish The Full Monty had never exposed its wang to soulless imitators.

OK, so the movie gods were not smiling down on Sundance this year. These things happen, I guess. But it was hard not to plane away from the ski slopes and invitation-only parties (which, as somebody put it, often occupied multimillion-dollar homes resembling Olive Garden restaurants) without fearing "independent film" had succumbed to a general cultural climate of unquestioning, assimilationist mediocrity. Maybe it's just that real independence is no longer the flav du jour at low-carb, ostensibly fiber-rich Sundance, circa 2005.