payoguiri

The film is "loyal" to the novel (Esquivel wrote the novel and the script). Reallized in an expensive way where the American character is NOT the bad guy!

Esquivels novel is very similar to "Las casa de Bernada Alba" from Garcia Lorca!

"Like water for chocolate" was shot in Ciudad Acuna, the town where Carlos Gallardo (the Mariachi from "El Mariachi"!) lived. Robert Rodriguez and him observed the shooting and learned from Araus techniques. In the following summer Rodriguez shot his "El Mariachi" in Ciudad Acuna, where he also made "Desperado" 2 years later.

The young Marco Leonardi who plays the roll of Pedro in "like water for chocolate" appears in Rodriguez' "From Dusk Till Dawn 3, the Hangman's Dauther" as the gunfighting protagonist "Madrid". In "Once Upon a Time in Mexico" he is the third drunken Mariachi next to Antonio Banderas and Enrique Iglesias!

All this because Rodriguez met him in "Like Water for Chocolate"!!!!!!!!1

The third Dudu-Flick begins in the Alpes of Swizerland where Dudu practices ski and flies through the sky (cool spacial effects for this time), goes on in Liverpool, where Jimmy Bondie, the owner of the superbug Dudu, is part of a car stunt show! There the show organizer Ivan Leskovic escapes to Switzerland with all the money of the show business by a hovercraft. Jimmy and Aldo Regozzani, the star of the show, follow Leskovic with Dudu passing London, crossing the English Channel but arriving in Lisbon. (here the director Zehetgruber, who also plays the roll of Bondie, employs older scenes of "Ein Käfer gibt Vollgas"!) From there a Truck drags them off to Zürich (Swizerland) using one of Dudu's gadgets (funny scene!) Later on Jimmy and Aldo begin to work in an oldtimer-garage in Bern. Then the plot becomes more complex. Some bank-robbers hide the money in the bug and so the bad guys want to get it back! At the same time Leskovic wants to sell an old Rolls Royce from the garage where Jimmy and Aldo are working, to a man called Hugo Stützli. Then Bondie constructs a fake Dudu to sell it to the one who offers more money, because Leskovic wants have it and the bank-robbers, too! It all ends in a kidnapping of Joe, the woman who own the garage, to finish with Jimmy and Aldo...

The best superbug movie ever seen!!! The story is very complex but well understandable! The jokes are awesome, especially the mixture of German and Swiss-German makes the film interesting, too! The special effects are on a very high standard for this time! Dudu looks very cool with his tuning accessories! Most actors were very popular in Germany of the 70ies like Walter Giller, Salvatore Borgese and Evelyn Kraft (poular in Hongkong, too). The fist fight-scenes choreographed by Borgese who also worked out stunts with and for Terence Hill, are well done.

On the whole the flick keeps being an uncertain mixture of comedy and action, but entertaining and pleasant to see!