I’m So Excited!
Passengers cut loose inside a hobbled airliner.
Directed by Pedro Almodóvar
(R)
**
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
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.”
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
Selfies ban in art galleries: a sign of the times?
Talking Point Priceless art has been damaged by visitors desperate to take a snap with star attractions, leading some galleries and museums to start fighting back
-
Quiz of The Week: 21 – 27 June
Have you been paying attention to The Week's news?
-
The Week Unwrapped: How do you turn plastics into paracetamol?
Podcast Plus, what is the Wagner Group doing now? And why is it so hard to find a job after university?