Film Review | I’m So Excited!

Are you a filmmaker, or a storyteller of any kind? Do you want to create instant drama with minimal effort? Just plonk your characters onto a plane. Think about it. It's the perfect setting to create tension and to push your characters to the end of their tether.

It's a claustrophobic environment running entirely on artificial oxygen. You're several thousand miles up in the sky, with no escape route, unless you plan on parachuting out of there should something go wrong.

To top it all off, you're surrounded by strangers and fed a bland mix of sterilised food, your ears will inevitably be popping, and you're bound to get queasy or cranky the longer the trip lasts.

It's a short-fuse situation that can easily explode with a mere prod of the dramatic pen. Which is why a plethora of thrillers - from the truly terrific to the utterly trashy - are set on board planes.

But what about comedies? Sure, Airplane! (1980) remains a classic, but if plane-bound action thrillers make up their own sub-genre, you could hardly say the same thing about their comedic counterparts.

Undaunted, the camp, colourful and provocative Spanish auteur Pedro Almodovar decided to backtrack into his comedic roots with this latest feature, I'm So Excited (Los amantes pasajeros), hot off the heels of his uncompromisingly dark, neo-Gothic psychodrama, The Skin I Live In (2011).

Employing his regulars Antonio Banderas and Penelope Cruz for what seems to be a throwaway cameo, which however serves as an apt introduction for the rambling chaos that follows, Almodovar plunges us into a vacuum-sealed world of camp neuroses, substance abuse and unexpected confessions.

Manned by a pair of bisexual co-pilots, Alex (Antonio de la Torre) and Benito (Hugo Silva), a plane en route from Madrid to Mexico is forced to circle around in search of the nearest safe port after the pilots realise that they're running on a wonky engine mid-flight. Having drugged the passengers in economy class to sleep, the trio of camp flight attendants - Ulloa (Raúl Arévalo), Fajardo (Carlos Areces), and Joserra (Javier Cámara) - are now tasked with entertaining (read: distracting) a motley group of eccentrics populating business class.

Though Almodovar's "light, very light comedy" - his words, not mine - is packed with incident, the recourse to all-too-frequent substance abuse to ramp up the hijinks suggests that Almodovar may just have been making it all up as he went along. And an overabundance of eccentric characters and even more eccentric set pieces doesn't help the film escape the accusations of instantly forgettable frivolity.

But Almodovar's signature visual style is very much present and accounted for, and will most likely keep you interested enough as the plot spins (quite literally) in circles. Almodovar conjures up gags like an expert but nervous magician. There's a socially awkward psychic (Lola Dueñas) who finally hits upon an ingenious method for losing her virginity after observing a narcoleptic couple go at it (!); and the on-board phone is on permanent speaker, resulting in some hilarious overheard conversations and leading to a subplot involving an actor stranded on the plane, his scorned ex-girlfriend and his mentally unstable current lover...

The plot unspools like a mad free-association binge that Almodovar clearly revels in, but is it really all that fun for the rest of his audience?

This is a frustrating question. But then again, I'm So Excited, seemingly undercutting its own English-language title, is a frustrating film. The individual gags are clearly made with an expert hand and photographed to perfection. It's also clear that the sequence involving the titular Pointer Sisters song was the most fun for Almodovar to direct. It certainly elicits a chuckle or two, albeit largely at the expense of flight attendants' stereotypically camp affectations.

(In fact, it's strange - and a little bit dispiriting - to see a filmmaker so renowned for deconstructing ideas about gender and sexuality resort to easy clichés to propel his plot forward.)

Though it's good to see Almodovar still powering ahead after all these years - during his career, his genre-hopping, but nonetheless trademark approach has often taken the world by storm - seeing him helm something so rambling and slight inspires an unflattering comparison: the lesser films of Woody Allen.

Like Allen, Almodovar is prolific and brash... which can sometimes lead to aimless and unsatisfying cinema.

I'm So Excited is worth a look for the bits that work, and its bizarre structure will leave you scratching your head (it's up to you to decide whether that's a good thing or a bad thing). But it's telling how The Skin I Live In - a surgically horrific film by all accounts - is more likely to appeal to a wider audience than this "light" but ultimately messy comedy.

I'm So Excited! will be screening at St James Cavalier cinema tonight at 18:30 on October 2-4, 6-18 and 28-29 at 15:00 and October 21-24 at 21:00.