Truly Dreadful Film

That was an excellent one.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

This film is very disappointing. Like most Woody Allen films the jokes arent very funny at all. It also lacks originality. The acting is okay. Bardem is very charming, but Cruz is by no means oscar worthy. Her character just shouts for most of her scenes, but in a forgettable way. The film lacks greatness, there is nothing for the viewer to real focus on enjoying. As a result it becomes a mammoth bore whilst also failing to do what all comedies should do; entertain.

My video store was doing an everything-must-go operation on their music and film articles so I bought a Blu-Ray copy of Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona for 5$ as I remembered that Penelope Cruz's performance was exceptional. When I put it on this evening I couldn't believe how insufferably bad everything else about it was.The story is pretty simple. It's a soft love/sex quadrangle between a guy and three women with a vague Woody Allen lemon flavor. The first woman (Rebecca Hall) is square, rich and fond of art, poetry and music. The second woman (Scarlett Johansson) is more unstable, not-so-rich but not-so-bad and fond of art, poetry and music. The third woman (Penelope Cruz) is self-destructive, not-so-rich but not-so-bad and an artist herself. The guy (Javier Bardem) is square, extremely rich and an artist himself. Together, they go sight-seeing, develop pictures in their darkroom, paint, write poetry, listen to Catalan guitar, have sex and drink expensive wine. And then everyone goes back where they came from and it's over.Almost a decade after watching it for the first time, I can say that Cruz's performance holds up in depth and subtlety and that the film is still worth watching for that (the confrontation scene in the kitchen is brilliant). It actually makes up for Johansson and Hall's often-embarrassing screen time. Having said that, it's not their fault; it's the director's. Woody Allen's reputed technique of having his ensemble cast recite his dialogue is responsible for a lot of the film's mediocrity because the lines themselves lack the sarcasm and the grace of his finer work. As for Javier Bardem, he's stuck in neutral gear, trying to temper the monstrous imbalance between Cruz's atomic bomb of a performance and Hall and Johansson's unflavored acting.One of the most frustrating elements of the entire film is the voice-over that constantly explains what the audience is supposed to figure out on its own if the film is well directed, but for some reason Allen doesn't want you to think. He'd rather have a narrator tell you what the characters are feeling or take you through an ellipsis of questionable subtlety. So for example the voice-over would tell you someone's sad when they're supposed to be sad. Maybe the director doesn't want you to think as mentioned before, or perhaps wants to think for you for ego-related reasons, or maybe tell you what to think for pretentiousness-related reasons. Whatever the case, the audience ends up feeling useless and stupid. I find the use of voice-over in a fiction film very questionable in general, and quite problematic in Vicky. I always have trouble understanding why some directors try to blur the line between cinema and literature. There is no separation between novel language and screenplay language in here. The voice over in Vicky Cristina Barcelona is like an audiobook with optional shots. Not to mention that the characters speak nothing like real people. Woody Allen's really happy having one woman recite another woman's character bible instead of giving the audience the pleasure and luxury of unveiling it. This might have been fun a few times in the past but now it looks like narrative incompetence (which might actually be true). The editing is flaky as well. I can mention several close-ups where I would've liked to see the reverse shot instead of being stuck with the original shot lasting several seconds longer than needed (which, in a feature film, can feel really awkward).You've asked for a Woody Allen film and you're getting one. You get the color corrector who explodes the yellows to make the film look Spanish, artistic and old. Spain is yellow. You get the aforementioned manipulated acting (if you mute some scenes you'd think Scarlett Johansson is saying "I was told to stand like this!"). You get punk rock explained to you by Woody Allen: a grandfather who refuses to publish his poetry because SCREW THE SYSTEEEEEM. See, Woody knows everything about the Sex Pistols. An excerpt from an unknown black-and-white film also makes its way out of nowhere to accompany a piece of lost voice-over midway into the film. Vicky Cristina Barcelona wouldn't be a Woody Allen film without him lecturing us on cinema. On classical cinema. On what's "good cinema" and what's "bad cinema". And we could go on and on about almost all other artistic disciplines. Classical guitar, for example, is "good music". It's the Catalan version of a standard Woody Allen jazz soundtrack. Taking pictures is also "good art" (with a silver camera, of course, not those decadent digital cameras!). Also, the more sensual scenes of the film beg the question: has Woody Allen ever actually seen a romantic sexual encounter, let alone between two women? I'm speaking for myself but I don't think two people have ever caressed each other's arms for two seconds and started having sex right away without prior signals. Ever. Not even in Humphrey Bogart movies; at least they argued before every kiss. The events that lead to sex in Vicky Cristina are too neutral.But the worst sin of the film is that its creator has no clue whatsoever who he's catering to. Who are the people who watch romantic comedies? Who are the people who watch sex comedies? Who are the people who watch the romantic sex adventures of Woody Allen characters in Spain? Who are the people who watch comedies, considering that Vicky qualifies as a comedy in Woodyland? "Two university graduates go wine-tasting." "Two BFF's suddenly have passionate sex and fall in love with a wealthy painter (throw in a suicidal ex-lover because otherwise it's a non-story)." "A woman happens to be studying Catalan painting and happens to fall in love with a Catalan painter who happens to still have feelings for his destructive ex who happens to be a Catalan painter." What's the demographic for that? After some thinking, now I know. It's the people who, like Woody, think that only straight, vanilla, female polygamy is cute and acceptable and who worship the director for "shining a light" on that. It's the people who, as much as you criticize a Woody Allen film, will always answer "Hey, it's Woody!" It's the people who refuse to admit that there are very specific reasons why 9 Woody Allen films out of 10 lose money and that "art-house" is not an excuse.Vicy Cristina Barcelona has its interesting aspects but it perfectly shows you that Woody Allen really lives in his own bubble. Almost all of his movies from the 21st century lack the substance to make up for that and Vicky's one of them. This used to bother the fans, now I don't think anyone bothers anymore. All in all, the quality of the film is awfully mediocre. Long story short, towards the end, the square girl gets shot by the unstable woman. The square girl tells her husband Doug that her former Spanish teacher shot her by mistake. Doug buys it. That's the movie we're dealing with.And that's one of the "good" 21st century Allen films. If you want, you can go watch Larry David scream at the camera for an hour.

I was building great expectations before seeing Vicky Cristina Barcelona, because of its incredible cast and my admiration towards Spanish and Catalan cultures, plus the fact that I visited Barcelona twice before and I was fascinated by it. But unfortunately the film did not fulfill my expectations. I am not saying it is a bad movie, unless I wouldn't have given it seven stars, however there are many choices that this picture took which were not much of a success, like choosing to put a narrative passage every five minutes to give us information about the characters that could've easily been transmitted through dialogue or action between the actors. Another thing I did not like was some performances especially by Scarlett Johanson who's acting didn't convince me with her portrayal of the characters feeling and getting them to the spectators. While on the bright side, the incredibly beautiful score of this movie with its charming flamenco melodies was intelligently employed and added a sort of symbolism to it. In addition, the performances by the other actors were pretty good, Penelope Cruz did an amazing job though I don't think her performance is Oscar worthy, with her appearing only in the second half of the movie in a few counted, but satisfying, shots. Javier Bardem and Rebecca Hall were both pretty fine. In a word, Vicky Cristina Barcelona is a fun movie to watch that depicts love from a different point of view and is quite worth a shot.

The first pitfall of Vicky Cristina Barcelona is Christopher Evan Welch as the droning, omnipotent narrator. The voice-over is not an inherently bad thing to use in a film; used incorrectly it can be disastrous, but with some thought it can be a wonderful addition. If you've seen Allen at his best, then you've seen Annie Hall, and how perfectly utilised it was in that film. In Radio Days, Allen's voice-over took on a wistful, nostalgic perspective of the past, and you could feel the longing in his recount. But here it not a character or persona, barely even a tool, but simply a way of bridging the gaps of the plot and acting as a substitute for the emptiness of the characters. It pipes up whenever Allen has been too lazy to fully visualise a thought or characteristic. We are told that Juan Antonio opens up on his passion through his paintings to Cristina, but it means nothing coming from some bored voice offscreen while the pair walk aimlessly on screen around the room. One of Allen's early forays into Europe sees the film utilise the picture-perfect postcard definition of Barcelona to its fullest extent. This is not the dreary New York skyline that Allen is so familiar with, where the characters are more striking than their surroundings. This is Europe and its broadest, vaguest and most exotic; the palette is awash with sun-kissed reds, oranges, browns and yellows, and Allen drenches each unspoken moment with a generous dose of Flamenco strings. It is a full-blown and unashamed fetishisation of the country's tendency for fleeting cultural and spiritual transformation, much like Coppola did with the neon-streaked Tokyo. A slightly sour note; Allen's Match Point was partially funded by BBC Films and turned out like a tourist's documentary, and the same thing has happened with this film. There must be no negative depictions or connotations in this version of Barcelona - which means the end result is every facet of the setting serving the character's emotional arcs (rather than existing in its natural state). The slum kids are merely an avenue for Cristina's artistic endeavours, but even they are brushed off for 'better' material. But Allen doesn't stop there. The vacation might have been uneventful if not for the timely intervention from Bardem's Juan Antonio, local artist and lover. He is a fine actor reduced to a pretty face by both the film and Cristina, whose attractiveness and exotic accent shoulder the burden for his character. Bardem offers good looks and empty ideas, at one stage descending to the level of a teenage boy on prom night, suggesting that sex is the one true way of really discovering one's inner feelings. The film isn't actually interested in his art or passions, because they are simply a device used to contrast the boring conventionalities of the Americans and their culture (and the cardboard cutout that is Doug - even his name is ordinary). He is joined by ex-wife Maria Elena, who is Penelope Cruz at her stormiest and most tempestuous. Allen falls easily into lazy stereotyping; the pair are hot-blooded and equally hot-tempered lovers who cannot spend more than a moment together without either making love or tearing each other's hair out, and they have the strange ability to make American women flustered and instantly weak at the knees. The odds are so ridiculously stacked against them - see how Cristina's 'Chinese' is contrasted with the flurry of Spanish that they pair exchange. And who wants aspirin when you can massage the soul directly, whispering sensually and vaguely on how to exorcise its demons!It seems impossible to imagine Vicky and Cristina as acquaintances, let alone friends. Allen pushes them to opposite ends of the spectrum, allowing for no middle ground. When Juan Antonio spontaneously propositions the pair of them, Vicky is offended while Cristina jumps at the opportunity. The blonde unsubtly admires his looks from a distance, and immediately dubs him as 'interesting'. It is Johansson's attractiveness working against her, as it did often in her early career. She was pegged as the blond beauty in Match Point, but had no other allure, which made the affair rather unexciting (unsurprisingly one of her best performances is a voiced one). And here she falls into cliché - these girls are always the aspiring (or struggling) actress types (she's made a 12-minute short about the impossibilities of love - no prizes for guessing how many tripods were involved in that production, or who the lead was) - airy and sexy all rolled into one. Ironically the film doesn't even deliver on that front. There is nothing sexy at all about Bardem and Johansson swallowing each other's mouths in an unbroken closeup for twenty uncomfortable seconds. The ending, if anything, salvages what little is left of this wreck. It concludes in perhaps the only way it could, by seeing Vicky and Cristina return to normalcy after their adventure. We've all experienced the depressing low after the orgasmic vacation high, so we know that it can't last forever.