I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

This is one of Almodovar's best movie. And honestly one of the most beautiful movies ever made. It's at the same time funny and sad, surrealistic and hyper-realistic. Carmen Maura is a tragic character and she's a fantastic actress. Quirky ideas flow from all sides, strange characters, but none of them are out of place, because they are just humans: petty and sublime. There is no judgment in Almodovar movies. Things are what they are and therefore there is no ridicule. It's always amazing to wonder - what was this movie about? Pretty much nothing, just ordinary life, and yet it's full of events that are out of the ordinary.

Almodóvar's fourth feature, blatantly shows a full-frontal man in the opening sex scene, its shock value aptly sets the harbinger of what viewers are expected to see: a hodgepodge of flawed characters.Among them are a home-working prostitute and her clients, one of which is an exhibitionist and another one is a struggling writer, with a kleptomaniac wife and an alcoholic shrink brother, a suicidal over-the-hill German singer, a telepathic kid and her disgruntled single mother, an impotent cop, a stingy mother-in-law, an abusive husband who is good at forging signatures, a teenage drug-dealer and an his even younger gay gigolo brother and a lizard named Money. Those are the rank and file surrounding our protagonist Gloria (Maura), an ordinary housewife who moonlights as a cleaning lady, living in a minute apartment with her husband Antonio (López), a taxi driver, her mother-in-law Abuela (Lampreave) and two sons in Madrid.A life of toil, Gloria gets neither love nor money from Antonio, who is possessed with a former German singer Ingrid (Loritz) in Berlin, for whom he worked as a chauffeur; her two sons have already gone awry in their life paths, Almodóvar really stretches out on a limb to let a mother give up her teenage son to the adoption of a lecherous dentist (nudge nudge); her only friend is the fille de joie neighbour Cristal (Forqué), from whom her horizon of sex perversion has been widely broadened. Yet, this friendship is prohibited from Antonio, whose double-standard is the epitome of male chauvinism, which is often the target in Almodóvar's works, and the marital dispute will heat up to a murder on the spur of the moment, however, things seem to be back on track for Gloria afterwards.Almodóvar's gaudy aesthetics has already gone full-blown in this creative dark comedy, and his script goes to great length to make the story whole, although this time even himself cannot make ends meet in this slightly meandering menagerie of wackos.His sympathy towards women is unmistakably tangible, and Carmen Maura is the perfect emblem of a woman who seethes with a cocktail of negative emotions: disaffection, irritation, frustration, depression and sorrow, but at the same time, represents strength, mettle and hope as if nothing can destroy her whatsoever. Verónica Forqué is a hoot to watch with her gum-exhibiting naivety as the golden-hearted working girl, and Chus Lampreave is always a go-to focus of attention in Almodóvar's universe. Whimsical and audacious, Almodóvar's fourth film is a terrific mess and to a great extent, shows his true grit in grain as a young and gifted filmmaker.

Carmen Maura plays a put-upon housewife (apartment wife?) in this early Almodovar comedy. And when I say put-upon, I mean really put-upon. The film ends with the implication that there are all kinds of people in Maura's situation, but I kind of doubt it. Her abusive husband is a cabbie working on forging Hitler's letters. Her oldest son deals heroin, while her younger son is banging his buddy's dad (later she sells him to his dentist). She also has to deal with her nutty, lizard-loving mother-in-law. There's also the prostitute next door and the telekinetic girl down the hall. It's all really crazy! Honestly, a plot does eventually develop (it's kind of dumb), but too much of the film just feels like a catalogue of the crazy stuff that's happening. Maura is as great as always, and the film definitely has its amusing moments, but, overall, it's not one of Almodovar's stronger films.

I loved it, it is pure Almodovarian genius! This really embraces everything that Pedro Almodovar stands for, setting out to include every social taboo in the book, but presenting it in a manner which, although shocking, doesn't seem to be making a social comment. More structured than earlier films, although not making as much of a comment about the "transition to democracy" period, which has by this point pretty much passed. It is a spectacular work of social realism which shows how much Spanish attitudes were still anchored in the past, whilst forever striving to become modern.You'd have to be totally crazy not to love it!