Los amantes pasajeros [I’m So Excited!] (2013)

(In French, On TV, December 2020) No one writes and directs films like Pedro Almodovar, and certainly no one can write an airplane thriller comedy like him. Largely taking place aboard a flight from Madrid to Mexico City that develops technical problems that may lead to a crash, I’m So Excited! takes a campy, comic, and very queer approach to its material, with lusty gay flight attendants trading barbs, sharing sexual exploit stories and drugging passengers to keep them quiet. The contrivances and complications inevitably reach Almodovarian proportions, enough to remind us that nothing here is meant to be serious or credible. While colourful and comic, I’m So Excited! is also overly broad and lightweight – and perhaps a bit dull when compared to its own best moments. The paradoxical result is that while bits and pieces of the film are great good fun, there’s too much of the not-so-much-fun material to keep a consistent tone. Another thing that really does not help is a female-on-male rape that’s played for laugh and singlehandedly slaps down the film’s good-natured charm by a full star or more. The last act also loses steam at a crucial moment where it should get crazier, and it doesn’t leave the film in the best shape in viewers’ minds as they take it all in. There’s clearly some potential here in having Almodovar go big, broad and colourful – but there are too many false notes (some of them honkers) in here to be completely acceptable.