I’m So Excited
Grade: C+
Director: Pedro Almodovar (All About My Mother)
Screenplay: Almodovar Cast: Lola Duenas (The Sea Inside), Cecilia Roth (All About My Mother
Rating: R Runtime: 90 min. by John DeSando
"Give 'em sex and booze and they'll be happy," Flight attendant
I rarely get excited about comedies because so many seem lame to me, but Pedro Almodovar’s I’m So Excited gets me modestly jazzed because it has some social humor, amusing, albeit excessive stereotyping, and slapstick rolled into a colorful (his palette is as pop cult gorgeous as ever) tale of a doomed airliner.
Let me explain how comedy comes about here; suffice it to say, it is not rude like Snakes on a Plane or even Airplane. Because an airliner on its way from Spain to Mexico City has landing gears not working, the pilots must find a runway somewhere in the world that is open and can be foamed. As you can tell, this will be in large part an absurd movie .
The crew who are awake (three female flight attendants are asleep along with a muscle-relaxed entire coach class) can’t keep the bad news from the business passengers, who are just as eccentric as the very fey stewards. "With a bisexual you can never be too sure”: The three stewards (dare I mention the 3 Stooges?) discuss openly their sex lives (but more humorously lip-sync the Pointer Sisters' hit and title of this film) and those of the pilots (one is bisexual), the female attendants, and passengers famous enough for the stewards to know their private lives. The frank discussions, frequently involving fellatio, are handled with a moderate finesse that brings out the humor rather than the grossness.
Crew and passengers becoming entangled in a web of promiscuity helps to make this film more of a societal cauldron than just a series of comic set pieces. Along for the ride are newspaper headlines about business scandals: "The Top 10 Financial Scandals” and an on-board CEO fleeing indictment for fraud. That slim satire including airport shenanigans (La Mancha airport is a swindle bleeding money) make this story enjoyably but only moderately lighthearted.
John DeSando co-hosts WCBE 90.5’s It’s Movie Time and Cinema Classics, which can be heard streaming and on-demand at WCBE.org. Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.rr.com
