buddy-63

"These are exciting times!" So says the hapless everyman German father as he belatedly embraces the Hitler/Nazi phenomenon. The same can be said for this brilliant and memorable movie. Even eight years after my last viewing, the images, content, context and overall impact of this singular film remain with me. This is not a film to trust the specifics of any other viewer's observations--so I shall not in this writing try to alert you to the elements which grabbed me by the scruff of the neck. As close to a flawless film as I have ever seen, it makes Surrealism believable, and Realism baffling. It is as though a nightmare revealed itself as a fairy tale, and insisted throughout that this was no dream. If you have ever lived through a disastrous event, you recognize the awful truth of this experience. Don't judge this film while viewing it--allow yourself to be released into its construct, and then watch it again and again, this time with thought and feeling. It will not dissapoint!

Oh my! I am beginning to think that Ed Hansen is an automaton, who has only one plotline: A company gets in financial trouble, then ditzy babes bail it out my flashing their T & A. Bumblings fools (read: men) try to act funny around them, but fail miserably. In "Bikini Carwash Company", Hansen has mastered his own genre, abandoning all sense of trying to make a real movie, and contenting himself with revealing a bevy of beautiful women. Nearly nude women fill the screen from start to finish.... Sure, his skeletal plotline is there, but he knows he's not fooling anyone, and the movie delivers what most guys want from a T&A movie. But in this airline disaster flick, the younger Hansen still feels guilty enough to TRY to make a movie. Orson Welles he ain't, and the ALBATROSS (the plane has a nickname--too cute, eh?) is no Spuce Goose (more like a Lurking Turkey, mind you). OK, there are two scenes worth seeing: the brunette "stewardness/dancer" does a rousingly awkward striptease as a cowgirl, and the fatboy's audition of new dancer/sterwardesses yields at least 2 bimbo's worth looking at (the nurse and the whipped cream girl get my vote), but that's about 3 minutes worth of the flight time. Take my advice, just after the stinkbomb routine, rewind the movie and watch the first part again. The rest of the flight is a nosedive into the ground. Two thumbs down.