You won't recognize the Iowa you know and love in "Iowa," a high-pitched drama about the state's growing methamphetamine problem.

Part "Pulp Fiction," part "Reefer Madness," it follows a slacker (Matt Farnsworth) and his girlfriend (Diane Foster) as they get caught up in the lucrative, addictive world of meth. Friends show how easy it is to make and, before you know it, they're cookin' with crank.

Diane Foster and Matt Farnsworth star in "Iowa."

Meanwhile, a sadistic parole officer (played to the hilt by Michael T. Weiss) wants to get his hands on the $200,000 the slacker is supposed to inherit when his father's insurance policy pays out. The young man's mother (an overwrought Rosanna Arquette) figures she'll collect when her son is out of the picture. So, a cat-and-mouse game between officer and client begins.

Foster has pulled away from her father (John Savage), a woebegone sort who just wants what's best for his daughter. While he's fretting in his downtown office, she's romping with a stripper from Des Moines and a meth head friend from God knows where.

Naming this "Iowa" is utterly misleading. Several times Farnsworth, Foster and Weiss lapse into weak Southern accents; repeatedly the sleepy streets of Centerville are aroused by roaring car chases and last-minute gunplay.

To send the message -- meth is everywhere -- Farnsworth, who also wrote and directed the film, needed less melodrama, more Iowa. It's like he has two films on his hands -- one set in the heightened world of Quentin Tarantino, the other in "Field of Dreams." David Lynch -- a man who knows a thing or two about quirks -- visited the state for "The Lawnmower Man" and came away with the right mix. This is two Sudafed packages short of a killer meth recipe.

What "Iowa" needs is an everyman quality -- Farnsworth's Esper and Foster's Donna need to lead relatively uneventful lives by day. Instead, they're racing down the street, creating scenes at the local bar and romping in the back of a pickup truck. If any of that went on in a typical Iowa town, everyone would know. These two couldn't escape the attention of everyone within a five-mile radius, much less the radar of a next-door neighbor.

As a director, though, Farnsworth has a sure hand. He attempts things (animation, special effects, car chases) that work well. But the ambition is tempered by a screenplay that's elementary at best. It's not subtle; it's hard to imagine "real" people saying some of these things. Sensing as much, Weiss goes way over the top and comes away a winner. He gets good camera angles, too, and a sense of respect that doesn't come from anything his character does. Arquette needs more direction; Savage looks like he's just clocking in.

Foster does a nice job (even though she's denied an arc of scenes) and Farnsworth hits and misses with his own work.

If Farnsworth didn't seem so passionate about the subject matter, you could dismiss "Iowa" as a vanity project. There's a thread of concern, though, that runs through the crazy quilt of cinematics. It's too bad it wasn't tended into something more.

Unrated, "Iowa" features nudity, profanity and violence.