I'm So Excited! (2013)

Best movie of this year hands down!

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Sometimes you go into a movie simply wanting a little fun. After so many years of Pedro Almodovar making twisted psychodramas and searing romances, often to acclaim like Academy Award nominations/wins and film festivals across the world, we now have a total screwball comedy that is another 'bottle' comedy from summer last year (remember This is the End all staged in one place). It's a filmmaker not going for anything serious, anything too deep, anything that will be About The Human Condition (in caps). And if there is, that's icing on the cake. This is just about farce, in the lightest ways for this filmmaker now in his latter years.Here you get to see what these characters do at the end of their self-involved ropes. There's a lot of energy and a lot of silliness with these characters, played by actors who are familiar players in this director's oeuvre, but the sketches click mostly. It's only when Almodovar leaves the plane for a scene where a character calls a woman and we see her story for a bit that it drags and loses its energy.But those male flight attendants are hysterical, in timing and how they express everything as BIG and frantic as possible, and when the music number of the film's title hits it finally releases one of only thinking of the song as that scene from Saved by the Bell (or maybe it's just for me it did). Fast, loose, and knowing how goofy it is, its movie-making that hits the spot at the end of a long day and maybe with a little drink on the side (minus he mescaline).

Almodóvar's latest offering after his posh genre thriller THE SKIN I LIVE IN (2011, 7/10) is an outré farce which is evocative of his earlier output in the 80s, almost exclusively restrained inside a plane, more specifically, the cockpit and the business cabin, I'M SO EXCITED! is a hilarious parody of AIRPLANE! (1980, 6/10). We all know economy is depressing and life is governed by austerity measures in Spain nowadays, so it wouldn't be a more opportune time for a screwball comedy to satirize the circumstances and offer its audience tons of fun, Almodóvar is a dab hand to achieve this mission, the film not only potently leads us to break away from the grim reality for 90 minutes, but also conducts its cunning metaphors for the aftertaste if one is familiar with the social contexts in Spain. A plane from Madrid to Mexico City is hovering around for hours since one of its undercarriage malfunctions (thanks to Banderas and Cruz's cameo), it is waiting for an empty airfield runaway to execute emergency landing, passengers in the economy class are dozing off under the influence of medication, spiked into their beverage by the cabin crew in order not to cause chaos, while in the business cabin, a mélange of passengers are unleashed into their own frenzy. It is overtly the gayest movie in the school of Almodóvar since LAW OF DESIRE (1987, 7/10), the three air stewards Joserra, Fajas and Ulloa (Cámara, Areces and Arévalo) are all gay, and the pilot Álex (de la Torre) is a bisexual family man now in a relationship with Joserra, and the co-pilot (Silva) has his own sexual disorientation problem. The palette is a shade muter than one's general expectation of an Almodóvar comedy, but not the craziness, especially when some anal smuggled mescaline (cached by a newly-wed to spice up his honeymoon) is put to use, everyone starts to either confess or being ecstatically aroused, the high point is Lola Dueñas' Bruna, a psychic middle-aged virgin, foreshadows the "smell of death" trope, and the way of her quest to lose her virginity is a hoot. There are outside cabin scenes about the episode of Ricardo (Toledo), who is an actor and a passenger on board, he deserts his insane and suicidal girlfriend Alba (Vega) then by peer coincidence, contacts with another ex-girlfriend Rith (Suárez), it is a corny philander's introspection and remorse when he reaches hanging-by-a-thread moment. Cecilia Roth is Norma, a dominatrix whose self- acclaimed collection of sex tapes with many VIPs incurs a threat of her own life by an anonymous assassin (María Yazpik), last but not the least, Sr. Más (Luis Torrijo), a banker with criminal background tries to abscond abroad, finds his alienated daughter and decides to turn himself in to face the music. The gay trio's signposting dance routine of The Pointer Sisters' I'M SO EXCITED is simply priceless, apart from being a lightweight diversion, the movie implies many seedy business of the political and societal situations, and what's more important, it is a tenable fight-back to those who question Almodóvar's versatility and audacity, he still got it, one must admit.

In recent years, acclaimed director Pedro Almodovar has turned his considerable skill and craft to fashioning magic out of melodrama; I'm So Excited! represents his return to the high camp and silliness of his earlier comedic output. Unfortunately, the final result is a mixed bag: it features moments so crazy that they approach the sublime, but there are also bits that are awkward and just don't work, however committed Almodovar and his cast - drawn from all stages of the director's fabled career - are to the concept. On a flight bound for Mexico, we meet the kooky cast of characters that make up Almodovar's boozy, drug-addled universe: a trio of flamboyant gay flight stewards - Joserra (Javier Cámara), Fajas (Carlos Areces) and Ulloa (Raúl Arévalo) - serve and imbibe alcohol in equal measure. All seems well as they entertain the first-class passengers and bait the co- captains, Alex (Antonio de la Torre) and Benito (Hugo Silva). But, when part of the aircraft's landing gear is damaged, the looming sceptre of death prompts passengers and crew alike to shed their inhibitions and secrets.In Spain, critics have lauded the film as a timely metaphor for the country, which is still struggling to get out from beneath a staggering weight of financial troubles. True enough, there's a hint of depth tucked within the raunchy jokes and alcohol fumes: Mr. Mas (José Luis Torrijo) is a crooked businessman who must decide between family and freedom, and his fellow first-class passengers include the haughty, demanding Norma (Cecilia Roth) and playboy actor Ricardo (Guillermo Toledo). Meanwhile, the entire economy section of the plane - read: the ordinary folk - has been taken out by the ridiculous shenanigans of the people in charge. But the metaphor remains too thin and fleeting to make much of an impact. Instead, I'm So Excited! busies itself with out-sized capers, best encapsulated in the hilarious song-and-dance routine that gives the film its English title: Joserra, Fajas and Ulloa's colourful attempt to lighten the mood, set to the three-part harmony of the Pointer Sisters.That high point aside, however, it's hard to tell whether to be amused or offended by the hijinks that take place onboard. After the three stewards cook up a heady concoction that plunges the entire first-class cabin into a brew of hormones and horniness, it's great fun to watch uptight family man Alex navigate his complicated relationship with the unfailingly honest Joserra. But self-professed psychic Bruna's adventure in the economy-class cabin might strike many as Almodovar taking it one risqué step too far.With this mile-high cocktail of sex and comedy, Almodovar clearly set out to shock as much as to entertain. He mixes edgy characters with outlandish situations, sometimes to wonderful effect. But, as the film unfolds, the cheerful, campy farce of it all slowly deflates, and it becomes clearer that his quirks and comedy have come chiefly at the expense of character and connection.

The good news: there need never be another argument about which film is Pedro Almodovar's worst. The bad news: this is abominably awful. My guess is that Almodovar just wanted to make a fun comic trifle, and more power to him. Unfortunately, the result is just so friggin' lame. Barely a single laugh to be had and so vapid it hurts. Hey, at least it still looks like an Almodovar film. A bunch of people in the business class of an airplane discover that their landing gear is severely damaged, so they decide to party it out with the crew. The English language title is a reference to the popular song, which plays during the film's most amusing sequence. The original, Spanish title is "The Passenger Lovers" because, during the climactic sequence, everyone screws. There are a bunch of plot lines and all of them feel unfinished - I was assuming I had gotten an edited version (with all the gay stuff, I thought maybe the American distributors cut down some stuff for an R rating), but, no. I'd say at least it's short, but these 90 minutes are interminable.