There was a time when Pedro Almodovar made films worth watching - this isn't one of them ! It doesn't work on any level - not as a drama, not as a comedy and not even as the farce as which it had been clearly intended. It is just a very sorry mishmash of meaningless scenes inflated with an inordinate amount of, quite idiotic, talk about sex.Can I say anything good abut this film at all? Well, visually, as with all Almodovar films, it looks excellent, a great sense of colour in the way of cheap fairground sweets, and gorgeously stylised sets. And yes, the musical "I'm so excited" performance by the flight attendants is good fun (if not entirely original). But that is simply not enough to make a film worth watching. I came away feeling extremely disappointed, really just like I used to feel as a child after the ingestion of tempting-looking candyfloss on the fairground - a brief sugar hit, but one that leaves you feeling hollow and hungry. What a waste !

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).

The relative brevity of Pedro Almodovar's airborne campfest is the most intelligent aspect of it. What can you say about a film that opens with Antonio Banderas and Penelope Cruz improbably cast (and pointlessly misused) as airport maintenance workers, only to drop them after two minutes? You can say it's gimmicky and you'd be right. The gimmicks continue with gay flight stewards who spend most of their time guzzling hard liquor and popping pills (after administering muscle relaxants to the entire economy class to knock them out – and keep them from interfering with the contrived melodramas acted out in business class where most of the story takes place). Within the first 15 minutes one of the stewards has knocked back enough tequila shots to incapacitate several people, yet carries on as if it had been spring water. This nonsensical cartoonish quality – rash acts in real time at close quarters without logical consequences - pervades the film. You can't take such characters or any of their actions seriously, so you can't care what happens to them either. They are merely stooges for the auteur's hothouse fantasies. The two pilots are bisexual, also drink alcohol and spend most of their screen time talking about or engaging in sex – in and out of the cockpit. The plane itself, due to mechanical problems, is forced to fly in circles until a runway can be found for an emergency landing. The action (other than couplings, boozing and pill popping) consists of various characters (including a psychic virgin who stares at the crotches of sleeping male passengers, an aging dominatrix, a rakish film actor and a professional hit man) rattling on about love, sex, mental illness, violence and corruption—in other words, the usual Almodovar obsessions which no longer titillate as they may have 30 or more years ago. He continues to specialize in unhinged people who chatter endlessly and glibly about subjects that the average person would find shocking or unsettling. Woven into the tapestry are intricate and wild coincidences such as a cell phone accidentally dropped from a viaduct by a woman about to jump therefrom in suicidal despair; the person she is talking to is a male passenger on the plane; her phone falls directly into the basket of a bicycle passing below, the driver of which just happens to be a woman who is having an affair with the same man whose voice continues to boom from the dropped phone; the cyclist recognizes his voice and now joins the ongoing drama which eventually, like the plane, goes nowhere in particular. Sometimes the verbal exchanges are wryly amusing, but mostly tiresome and seldom believable. The ending is a rather clever and elaborate visual joke which I won't give away. Metronome's catchy hit "The Look" makes the closing credits bearable.

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.