Review: I’m So Excited! (15)

An aircraft with a technical problem. Passengers drugged so they can’t complain. An alcoholic chief steward. A psychic virgin. An embezzler on the run. A hitman with a contract to fulfil.
By Tony Earnshaw
Published 3rd May 2013, 10:58 BST

Pedro Almodóvar doesn’t make it easy to define his movies and I’m So Excited! is packed with so many eye-popping, crude and occasionally laugh-out-loud elements that it is truly a genre-busting project.

Is it a gender-bending musical? A tongue-in-cheek treatise on sex and death? A celebration of unfettered sexual liberation? Who knows?

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It is part aviation thriller (but not much), part Airplane! spoof (but even less), part satirical, salacious mile-high-club antics and part treatise on the various travails we face in our lives – and how alcohol, drugs and sex can solve them.

The king of high camp can’t sustain his kitsch majesty in the confined space of an aircraft. The gallons of tequila, the OTT antics of the crew, high-kicking dance routines, even the liberal doses of rumpy-pumpy can’t prevent this from descending into the clouds and getting lost en-route. Worried about what you’ve done in life? Troubled by an unrequited love? Yearning for something you’ve never had? Almodóvar’s answer is always the same: lose yourself in unbridled lust. Ultimately Almodóvar is flying blind. Consequently the film heads off into the wide blue yonder to the Pointer Sisters’ greatest hit.

On general release