Torrente, the Dumb Arm of the Law (1998)

Thanks for the memories!

Beautiful, moving film.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Ettore Scola had done a great movie about people living in slums. It was farcical and many liked it, I liked most of it but couldn't find it delicious because of its worst moments of ugly sordid reality. To me this feels sick to get a kick out of this.Torrente goes full throttle on the dumb and dirty reality that some might find great fun. It had some great laughs I admit, but for me these laughs - scattered within the cheap ludicrous grins - were the most natural, low-fat, jokes. Fortunately there are no fart or puke jokes but, hey, Torrente is a big farting load of puke all the same.And even if I admit this stuff is not for me I can still say that a movie, even a not-the-least-serious movie, that brings in nice little supporting characters to kill them the next minute, just for fun, is plain wrong. That's why I won't pinpoint the good things in Torrente. Basically, Outrageous Fun can be roaringly funny but it takes more than piling up dirty jokes and cheap tricks.

Being Spanish as I am I find this movie amazingly funny (i've watched it a million times :P). But I must admit it might not be as funny for everyone, if you're not Spanish you'll probably find it quite stupid and boring, why? Because many of the jokes are referred to things everyone in Spain knows about but people from other parts of the world don't, some of the characters are quite... infamous in Spain and that makes them funny... and many other details as these. Torrente is something of a Spanish Homer Simpson / Peter Griffin, and everyone finds those characters funny because everyone knows quite a lot about the US and American celebrities, but with Spain... I'd say not.

Just bought and seen the dvd (dirt cheap) though I never heard of it. Had the same experience with works like Almodovar (Todo Sobre Mi madre, Carne Tremular) and Amenabar (Abre Los Ojos). None of them were disappointing (understatement). First I thought It would be a movie like Bad Lieutenant , this time on too much sangria. From the right beginning really funny and a-moral. But hey, it turned out to be a true movie after all.

This is one of the worst comedies I have ever encountered. It brings nothing new, it's like to take all bad Spanish humor films (just the bad ones) and to mix them together. The problem lays in the plot, interpretation and camera are OK. The film is full of clichés and easy jokes, it ridicules the typical fascist, nostalgic of Franco's era, but so in a way that I could even feel compassion and solidarity to him. The whole film is predictable. This is a film to avoid.