Cinema: Andrew Worsdale
MACHISMO meets facetious jokiness in Robert Rodriguez’ Desperado, the disappointing follow-up to his zany and spirited $7 000 art- house hit, El Mariachi.
Antonio (baby-fat) Banderas plays the balladeer who travels with a veritable armoury inside his guitar-case as he proceeds to exact revenge on a druglord in a small Mexican border town where the baddies dial the phone with a switchblade.
Styled as a quasi-comic western filled to cigar-chewing brim with shootout after shootout (during filming they expended more than 8 000 rounds of ammo, over 1 100 sparking balls, 600 squibs and six gallons of blood in various consistencies), the film fails to rise above a self-conscious, even camp, version of an Hispanic-Bruce Willis western.
Beginning with a confused flashback, the story revolves around the brooding, peaceful-until- pushed-too-far hero trying to even the odds after the gangsters shoot up his guitar- playing hand and the woman he loved. But the pay-off is so predictable that, after 83 minutes of mayhem, this viewer felt cheated.
Not to say there aren’t some fun moments along the way. After one balletic shoot-em-up, Banderas and his opponent scour the floor of corpses looking for a gun that might still be loaded. And sexy love interest Salma Hayek (who runs the bookstore that covers as a drug exchange in the town where nobody reads) sings a love ballad while sitting on Banderas as the baddies besiege their love-nest. These are good, jokey action sequences almost worthy of
Quentin does, in fact, put in a cameo as the “pick-up guy” telling a joke rapid-fire fashion before getting his brains blown out. But the problem with this movie is that it’s like watching a bunch of Californian college kids having fun with the idea of movies. That’s fine if you’re Tarantino, but this time the feel is so tired and in-house that even the action doesn’t grip you. You’re too aware of being jerked around by precocious kids with Hollywood money to burn. Rodriguez’ production company is titled “Los Hooligans”, which gives you some idea of how cutie-cute this unoriginally coy macho movie is.
Having not been witness to Jim Carrey’s antics in his past four hits, from the latest Batman back to his introduction as pet detective Ace Ventura, I had a great time at his new mission, Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, and wouldn’t hesitate to drag along any 12-year- old relations if I had any.
Poised between the infantile and the guileless, this time the intrepid veterinarian 007 goes to Africa — fictional Nibia, to be exact — to find Shikata, the sacred white bat of the friendly Wachati tribe before the wedding of the chief’s daughter to the first son of the warrior tribe, the Wachootoos.
It may all sound very racist and American and in bad taste. Well, that’s the point, and although at times the film revels in a bogus sense of African language and culture, and it seems that Ace is going to colonise Africa with bad taste, that’s all part of its simplistic irreverence. There’s no need to take offence at the childlike jokes — just laugh. For example, the friendly tribespeople have a tradition of spitting in their guests’ faces if they like them, so Ventura summons up enough phlegm to cover a hut and leaves with the words: “It’s the mucous that binds us.” If that doesn’t appeal, stay away.
Carrey’s performance is a virtual mug-a-thon with his big jaw, eyes, brows and arch accent — he’s like the high-school show-off who can’t stop laughing at himself. He’s naughty, cute, loves animals, hates corrupt human beings and people who wear fur coats, and his brand of jest is incredibly infectious. So much so that, although the plotting becomes a bit slow and predictable, this is the right stuff for odious, fun-loving kids of all ages.
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