Film review: I’m So Excited

No air catastrophe comedy can escape comparison with Airplane!, the seminal 1980 disaster movie spoof starring Leslie Nielsen. But Pedro Almodovar is as singular a figure in the film world as Nielsen, so his entry in the genre was always going to be distinctive.

We start in Madrid, where brief cameos from two of Almodovar’s starriest long-term collaborators, Antonio Banderas and Penelope Cruz, lay the groundwork for the impending crisis, namely a damaged undercarriage for a Peninsula Airways flight to Mexico. The cattle-class plebs are swiftly drugged out of the game, and the action focuses on the handful of quirky business-class passengers – who include a clairvoyant, a dominatrix and a couple of shady businessmen – and crew. There’s also a land-based subplot that jars with the levity of most of the onboard goings-on, in which the girlfriend of a lothario on the flight contemplates suicide, while we gradually learn more about the shady backgrounds and complicated personal lives of the other travelers and crew.

The presence of a fugitive dodgy banker has led some to read the stricken plane as a metaphor for the parlous state of the Spanish economy, but whatever social commentary there is here has all the substance of an in-flight meal. Almodovar intended to make a very light comedy, which is exactly what he has done.

Several of his usual tropes and themes are deployed, namely strong women characters often driving the story, a transgressive approach to issues of gender and sexuality, homosexuality and melodrama. The movie is as rich and colorfully presented as the director’s others, brimming with Hispanic brio. There is much slapstick humor, and the centerpiece – the cabin crew’s impromptu performance of the Pointer Sisters hit from which the movie takes its English title – is so likeably silly that all but the most curmudgeonly, gay squeamish viewers will find their feet tapping along.

However, by Almodovar’s standards, I’m So Excited is not a film to get overly excited about, and will probably end up being a minor work in his oeuvre. Because the Spanish director’s filmmaking always pushes boundaries, a comedy of this slightness will disappoint fans of his deeper work. While his last film, the psychological thriller The Skin I Live In (La piel que habito) truly plunged dark areas of passion and sexual identity, the most censor-bothering scene here is a sex-farce episode when a spiked drinks cart service sees a chemically-induced new round of mile-high club inductions, which viewers will find cheeky fun or gratuitous smut, depending on their proclivities. The Skin I Live In may be an unfair point of comparison given its genre, but even the 2006 comedy-drama Volver makes a more satisfying watch.

But despite its slightness and easy, breezy approach, the cast exudes heavyweight quality. Though the main actors are not household Hollywood names like Cruz and Banderas, all deliver performances that are clearly far more robust than Peninsula Airways’ safety checks. The crowning glory is Carlos Areces, Raul Arevalo and Javier Camara, who joyfully showboat as the campest cabin crew trio ever beheld. Cecilia Roth delivers the standout female turn, as a mistress to the A-list.

So though it is very much Almodovar lite, I’m So Excited still makes decent in-flight entertainment. Just not the kind you’ll ever see on a plane.