I’m So Excited!

Directed by Pedro Almodóvar

(R)

**

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Pedro Almodóvar’s new comedy “is vertiginously disappointing in the wayonly bad films from great filmmakers can be,” said Robbie Collin in The Daily Telegraph (U.K.). A sex farce that’s also a satire about Spain’s financial woes, it “feels like a film Almodóvar had to get out of his system—a kind of cinematic kidney stone.” But at least it should be a cathartic experience for audiences too, said Jonathan Holland in Variety. Returning to the “broad, transgressive comedy” of his early career, Almodóvar loads a motley crew of business-class passengers into a Spanish airliner, forces them to circle above Madrid while waiting to make a crash landing, then unleashes “a liberating orgy” when attendants spike the passengers’ drinks with mescaline. Passengers include a disgraced banker, a soap star, and a dominatrix, but audiences are likely to most appreciate the “chirpy” clairvoyant played by Cecilia Roth, said Ryan Gilbey in The New Statesman. She can’t give the whole journey loft, though. The political satire at play is “never quite stinging enough,” and “the elements of silly and somber occasionally cancel out one another.”