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The business class passengers, who have not been drugged, include Bruna (Lola Duenas ), a psychic who has a bad feeling about the flight, but who has never had sex and is convinced she will lose her virginity before the plane lands. Norma (Cecilia Roth) is a former madame/dominatrix who has slept with 600 of the most important people in Spain and recorded the exploits, and now believes there’s a conspiracy to kill her. Also in business class are a young bride (Laya Martí) and groom (Miguel Ángel Silvestre), actor Ricardo (Guillermo Toledo) and a mystery man (Jose Maria Yazpik).
The first hour is breezy and light, with the characters comically facing what they think might be their final hours. As it turns out, there has been some history involving this airline carrier and some of the same staff.
With time running out, the passengers don’t hold any inhibitions back. Norma and the mystery man have sex, while Bruna scouts heterosexual men to lose her virginity. The pilot sneaks into the bathroom for a little nookie. The groom decides to get everyone high on mescaline that he has smuggled inside his rectum. Alcohol flows freely.
But when the director begins to delve too much into the lives of the passengers, the film falters. We meet two of the women the actor onboard is involved with — one of whom (Paz Vega) is about to hurl herself out of an apartment, while another (Blanca Suárez) is bicycling below and catches the cell phone dropped from the suicidal woman.
It’s a taxing, needless subplot, and it abruptly brings the film to a halt. The more we learn about the outer lives of all the passengers, the less successful “I’m So Excited!” is.
Camping it up
Almodovar uses many of his former co-stars in this film and the actors fall into character. Antonio Banderas and Penelope Cruz, who often collaborate with the director, have funny cameos in the first scene, but then they disappear.
The stewards are some of the most gay, retro characters of his career. Almodovar has never been afraid to camp it up and in “I’m So Excited!” he doesn’t hold back. But it’s ultimately not very substantive, and the second half waivers between silly melodrama and unbridled flamboyance.
The three stewards do a musical number to the title song that is meant to entertain us and the passengers but is inert and un-amusing. And long.
Almodovar’s last film was the creepy, unsettling “The Skin I Live In.” “I’m So Excited!” is a 180-degree turn, harking back to his early days. It’s nice to see him so liberated and after nothing but a good time. This is his take-off of on “Airplane.”
Yet as colorful and frothy and raunchy as this is, especially in a braindead summer movie season, this is one of the noted filmmaker’s frailer works.
Top photo: The wildly gay airline staff can’t quite redeem ‘I’m So Excited,’ the new comedy from director Pedro Almodovar. It’s frothy fun, but gets weighed down by some characters’ back stories. (Publicity photo by Sony Classic Pictures)