One star. Rating: R, for strong crude and sexual content (all verbal), and drug use
By Derrick Bang
I’m still struggling to believe
that Pedro Almodóvar had anything to do with this flimsy waste of celluloid.
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| In an effort to distract their passengers from the dire circumstances that are preventing the plane from landing, three flight attendants — from left, Fajas (Carlos Areces), Ulloa (Raúl Arévalo) and Joserra (Javier Cámara) — break into a hilariously choreographed rendition of the Pointer Sisters' "I'm So Excited." This three-minute sequence is absolutely the only thing worth watching in this bewildering bomb. |
Almodóvar, the acclaimed Spanish
filmmaker who brought us Women on the
Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, All
About My Mother, Tie Me Up! Tie Me
Down! and Volver?
That Pedro Almodóvar? Seriously?
Hard to imagine.
Almodóvar knows better than most
that cheeky, exaggerated sensuality is a magical blend of setting, sharp dialogue,
camera-friendly actors who radiate lust and, yes, artful nudity (the less
expected and more inappropriate, the better).
I’m So Excited contains none of the above.
Worse yet, Almodóvar has abandoned his (usually) progressive Western European
sensibilities in favor of stale and vulgar homoerotic jokes: the sort of
tiresome one-liners currently viewed as the height of sex humor by arrested
American adolescents such as Seth Rogen and the rest of Judd Apatow’s repertory
company.
I’ll give Almodóvar the benefit
of the doubt, and assume that he deliberately spoofs timeworn gay male
stereotypes here ... but that’s not apt to mollify viewers who will recoil from
his mincing portrayal of three flight attendants. Not even Liberace was this
swish.
On top of which, if Almodóvar
removed every dialogue reference to fellatio — spoken by men, women and genders
hard to determine — I suspect his entire script would clock in at fewer than 25
words. Never have so many men, some of them defiantly heterosexual, claimed to
so thoroughly enjoy wrapping their mouths around ... um, you get the idea.
This might be amusing — even
hilarious — under better circumstances. But absent context or back-story, it’s
just a bunch of ill-defined characters with potty mouths and overcooked
libidos. Never has polymorphous perversity sounded so ... well ... dull.
This film also looks cheap, with
almost all of its “action” restricted to the cramped, obviously fake-set
interior of an airplane. Brief detours are taken to a) an apartment; and b) a
city street. Also not what you’d call budget-busters. Production costs couldn’t
have topped $1.78.
The cast looks and sounds
under-rehearsed, and the dialogue is forced, unpersuasive and (from the sound
of things) frequently improvised. I’m amazed Almodóvar had the audacity to
claim scripting credit; I see scant evidence of actual writing.
He also opens with a tease: a
quick scene between Antonio Banderas and Penélope Cruz, leading us to hope that
we’ll see more of them. No such luck. Their radiant faces — their naturalistic
performances, and their obvious chemistry — vanish after a quick prologue.
After that, we’re stuck with the B-Team. No, wait ... more like the P-Team.
The story then, such as it is:
Banderas and Cruz make their
cameos as León and Jessica, members of the ground crew for Peninsula Airlines
Flight 2549; thanks to a brief interruption, León fails to properly remove the
large wheel chocks, prior to take-off.
We then join Flight 2549 during
take-off, as the flight crew preps all passengers with the usual lecture about
oxygen masks and seat flotation devices; this is our first glimpse of flight
attendants Fajas (Carlos Areces), Ulloa (Raúl Arévalo) and Joserra (Javier
Cámara).
Then, whoosh, time passes. The plane is quiet, which is no surprise;
everybody in coach is fast asleep, having been doped with muscle relaxants (!).
For some reason, the business class passengers have been allowed to remain
awake. (I guess we’d have no movie otherwise, which I’d argue would have been a
good thing.)
The reason for the doping, and
for the worried expressions shared by pilot Alex Acero (Antonio De La Torre)
and co-pilot Benito Morón (Hugo Silva), is that Flight 2549 is in trouble. It
can’t land because the aforementioned chocks have interfered with the
deployment of landing gear. The intended flight to Mexico City has been
canceled; the plane just keeps circling, waiting for ground-based Folks In
Charge to find and then prepare a runway for an emergency landing.
We now pause, for a moment of
topicality.
Almodóvar can’t be blamed for bad
timing; he certainly didn’t know that his film would gain its U.S. opening mere
weeks after the Asiana Airlines crash in San Francisco. I’d like to think,
however, that the folks at Sony Pictures Classics might have deemed release a
wee bit tasteless, and elected to postpone. Absent that bit of prudence, we’re
left with a low-rent sex comedy that would have been dreadful under the best of
circumstances, but becomes even worse by attempting to mine humor from a situation
that is seriously un-funny at this particular moment.
(Disney “waited” six months,
until April 2002, to release Big Trouble
— with its tasteless bomb-in-a-plane climax — in the wake of 9/11. That didn’t work
either.)
Anyway...
With death a very real possibility,
the business class passengers eventually confess the reasons for their trips:
revelations apparently intended to be provocative and/or amusing.
Hardly.
Bruna (Lola Duenas), a
self-proclaim psychic, frets that she may die a virgin; she can’t stop eyeing
the impressive pants bulge of one fellow snoozing away in coach. A newlywed
groom (Miguel Ángel Silvestre), actually a drug mule with a baggy of mescaline
shoved up his fundament, pops pills into the mouth of his bride (Laya Martí) so
that she’ll sleep through whatever happens next.
Gossip queen Norma (Cecilia
Roth), actually a dominatrix who boasts of having slept with her country’s 600
most powerful men — while taping said encounters, for blackmail leverage —
worries that this calamity is a rather ostentatious plot to kill her. Infante
(José María Yazpik), a somewhat sinister fellow, keeps close counsel.
Corrupt businessman Mas (José
Luis Torrijo), having fled just ahead of arrest back home, laments the ongoing
estrangement from his daughter, who has embraced a provocative sexual
lifestyle. Finally, soap opera star Ricardo Galán (Guillermo Toledo) has
abandoned his most recent lover, while contrived circumstances bring a former
lover (Blanca Suárez, as Ruth) back into his life.
Our brief sojourn with Ruth takes
us back to the ground, for a subplot that appears to have been dragged in from
another film. A better one, too, from what we see of it.
Back in the air, everybody gets
drunk — including the pilots — in some cases will past the point of acute alcohol
poisoning. That’s not funny; it’s just dumb. Inhibitions disappear,
particularly after the application of mescaline-laced punch. Confessions
emerge, none the slightest bit interesting. The bride demonstrates a talent for
having sex in her sleep. Bruna has sex with the well-hung fellow in coach,
while he sleeps.
Nobody undresses, not even a
little. As Joe Bob Briggs might have groused, back in the day, we don’t even
get a flash of side-boob during any of these couplings.
The film’s sole saving grace comes
when the three gay caballeros — ah, flight attendants — wriggle and jiggle
their way through a lively lip-synched and hilariously choreographed rendition
of the Pointer Sisters’ “I’m So Excited” (hence the film’s title).
No doubt this scene soon will be
extracted as a YouTube video, saving everybody the trouble of enduring the rest
of this tawdry turkey.
Actually, I’m So Excited has one more virtue: It’s short. At 90 minutes, it’s
only 87 minutes too long.
I don’t care how much you admire
Almodóvar; this one must be skipped.
You’ve been warned.
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