Airbag

Skit? Farce? Take-off? Leg-pull? As if concocting an indigestible gag-laden pudding overbrimming with rich ingredients, Bajo Ulloa resorts to an over-the-top fusion and confusion of near-edible pranks, rather as if he had mixed a fair amount of 007 with a dash of The Godfather, a few spoonfuls of Al Capone, a sprinkling of Elliot Ness, and a liberal ladelling of tongue-in-cheek imagination, to cook up this inspired nonsensical triviality. Ah, he had good advice at hand: Karlos Arguiñano (Don Serafín) is a renowned restaurateur and TV-chef.

Among mafia-looking types racing about the Iberian Peninsula, only stopping to visit mini-skirted brothels, several high-level rendezvous beside extravagant swimming-pools, a few odd explosions here and there, airbags going pop in cars over on their roofs, it is possible to glean from the fast moving action that some are looking for money and a valuable ring which, - how could you guess? – others are also hell-bent on getting their grubby maulers on. Now, if that does not sound like very coherent English, I can assure you that that is the last thing this Spanish film needs. Wallowing in excessive doses of whimsical indulgencies carried to the ultimate degree, the film canters along in all directions bar the one where you think it is going, thus decreeing that you should not resort to thinking, but simply limit yourself to a seemingly unrelated sequence of comic antics interspersed with a few fair-dinkum wenches, whilst trying not to break up into little bits as you roll about in hilarious mirth.

Nothing should be taken at face-value; nothing should be taken seriously. Given such jaundiced view-point, if, like me, you might prefer less fantasious capers, you might be inclined to turn it off. However, this is precisely where the film defies you to do such a silly thing: you sit glued to your seat to the very end, because you, like me, are darned well not going to miss the next clownish round. So take your partners, as there is a bit of Strauss waltzing going on, and let yourself be driven headlong into bedlam and pandemonium. If you survive, take a stiff Alker-Seltzer (or even a double scotch), and carry on as beforehand as if nothing happened. Which, I think, is precisely what happened: nothing.

Thereinafter, you can try to make up your mind whether to laugh at it, with it or for it. It's a free world………...