Baby Snakes isn't the longest rock-star self-indulgence ever put on the screen ([Bob Dylan's] Renaldo and Clara still holds that title) nor is it the most pretentious (ditto). It's an ego trip, all right, but on a picayune, low-rent scale; its intermittent stabs at higher meaning come mostly in the form of gnomic inside jokes, meant for the exclusive consumption of Zappa's ever-shrinking cadre of hard-core devotees. It may be the first rock-star movie ever designed from the outset as a cult item….

Clearly, the movie is a labor of love—but for what? You'd expect a cranky pedagogue like Zappa to at least pretend to some sort of big thematic statement, and he does; but the substance of Baby Snakes is as thin as dental floss. The movie's advertising line, "a movie about people who do stuff that is not normal," is as far as it goes...