In modern literature, a select group of distinguished writers stand out from the crowd. These authors have been able to create an entire town full of characters so eccentric that they haunt our memory long after we have forgotten the stories that united them. For instance, Stephen King returned time and again to the quirky inhabitants of the make-believe Maine town of Castle Rock.

But the best-known of such writers could easily be John Berendt, whose Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil spent 173 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list. Unlike the locals of King’s Castle Rock, the almost-unbelievable characters in Berendt’s non-fiction peek at Savannah, Georgia, are actually real people. In the book, Berendt uncovers a few juicy secrets while introducing us to the unforgettable inhabitants of the quiet southern town.

Clint Eastwood’s overly-long film version of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil transforms the story into a lackluster murder mystery that evolves into a tedious courtroom drama. The result is a strange hybrid between a John Grisham novel and a freak show. Screenwriter John Lee Hancock is partly responsible for the blame. Hancock builds his script around a new character, John Kelso (John Cusack). Kelso is a New York journalist sent to Savannah to cover the infamous Christmas party held every year by local millionaire Jim Williams (Kevin Spacey).

Initially suspicious of Williams, Kelso quickly dismisses any misgivings during the party as Williams shows off his impressive antiques collection. Can you think of another person who actually owns three Fabergé eggs? “This place is fantastic! It’s like Gone with the Wind on mescaline!” Kelso exclaims. “New York is boring!”

After the party ends and the evening begins to wind down, Kelso finds himself in the middle of a story much bigger than he had originally imagined. Drawn back to the house by wailing police sirens and a noisy commotion, Kelso discovers that Williams has shot his hot-tempered young bisexual lover (Gattaca’s Jude Law) in what he calls an act of self-defense.

Before we know it, the movie is all about Kelso and his off-the-wall experiences as he tries to write a book about the killing. With a talented actor like Spacey playing Williams, who really cares about Cusack’s hollow Kelso character? Kelso spends most of his time standing around with a gaping mouth and bedazzled expression as the bizarre events unfold around him. His character inadvertently draws the focus away from Savannah, which forms the book’s backbone but becomes little more than an unusual setting for the film.

What the audience knows is limited to what Kelso witnesses first-hand or manages to find out. As a result, Kelso inexplicably ends up in the middle of strange midnight voodoo visits to the cemetery and exclusive client-attorney conferences between Williams and his lawyer (Jack Thompson), a University of Georgia fanatic responsible for the school’s bulldog mascot.

In his search for the truth about the night’s mysterious events, Kelso finds himself depending on clues from The Lady Chablis. At first, Kelso can’t put his finger on what it is that makes Chablis’s charm so magnetic. Playing “herself” with a delightful flair, Chablis earns the title of cinema’s most entertaining drag queen, despite fierce competition from Robin Williams’s Mrs. Doubtfire, the entire cast of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and the ultra-disgusting Divine of Pink Flamingos.

The Lady Chablis is only one of the film’s many oddball characters. We also get to meet a man who spends his days walking a nonexistent dog, a colorful Savannah socialite who can turn suicide into a topic for small talk and an ornery old resident who ties horseflies to his sweater and threatens to poison the water supply, to name a few. With people like these roaming the streets of Savannah, it’s no wonder that a book about them has achieved cult status.

Lately, when Eastwood directs a film, he plays as important a part on screen as he does behind the camera. For the first time since directing Bird in 1988, Eastwood contents himself with staying on the sidelines. This time around, he fills the space with his daughter Alison, who plays Kelso’s love interest, Mandy Nichols. The part is a big step up from Alison’s cameo as an art student in the Eastwood-directed thriller Absolute Power. Of course, Hancock made a few extra edits to the story so Joe Odom (Paul Hipp), Nichols’s hilarious playboy fiancé, would disappear early on in the film, giving Nichols and Kelso a chance to fall for one another.

Viewers familiar with Eastwood’s directorial efforts won’t be surprised that Midnight splits its time between the story and lengthy bouts of character development. In films like A Perfect World, The Bridges of Madison County and Absolute Power, Eastwood interrupts a story arc to focus on elements like emotional bonds, hidden rivalries or family relations. Midnight is actually the first instance in which the time he spends rounding out his characters has been more entertaining than the main plotline.

Word has it that Eastwood’s edit of the film ran about four hours. At a robust two and a half hours, the final cut of Midnight is still much too long. After the novelty of the characters begins to wear off, there’s really not much to keep us interested in the movie. By the end, the film frantically tries to put all the pieces of the mystery together, even though characters have made it perfectly clear that it really doesn’t matter what happened the night of the Christmas party.

If nothing else, Eastwood stays true to the most important aspect of Berendt’s book: he allows us to spend quality time with some of the wildest characters we’ll ever meet while letting the forgettable story fade into the background.