Title: I’m So Excited (Los amantes pasajeros)

Opens: June 28, 2013

If Generalissimo Francisco Franco, who led a fascist government in Spain from 1936 to 1975, saw “I’m So Excited,” he would be so astonished at its innocuousness that he might never have ordered sexual repression on the movie screen. So unfunny is this latest from the great Pedro Almadóvar—heretofore known for such terrific movies as “Talk to Her” (two male friends care for the girlfriends who are in comas) and “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” (a woman wants to find out why her lover left)—that a viewer could get the impression that the movie was first released about 1950. This was when gay jokes might be considered fresh rather than the cinematic version of aged Manchego cheese.

The film features three gay stewards and two pilots of bisexual orientations. The concept appears to be that when an airline is in trouble, its passengers, thinking they’re on the verge of their final flight, release secrets that would otherwise have been kept private. As they fear death, we confessions of a bank swindler, a retired porn queen, a hit man and a clairvoyant virgin. During the flight , a newlywed couple have sex while the woman is sleepwalking, a virgin has sex with a man who is fast asleep, and the stewards entertain the folks in business class to distract them, lip-synching the song “I’m So Excited.” That last bit might be just enough to make the passengers hope for an explosive, deadly emergency landing.

The folks in economy class are ignored, which is about the only aspect of the film that is realistic. In fact in this case they’ve been put to sleep, their drinks laced with drugs to prevent them from kvetching about the lack of leg room and the three-across seats. And oh: the pilots drink, encouraged by one alcoholic attendant.

As one critic has stated, “I’m So Excited,” or “The Loving Passengers” in the Spanish title, is “a half-crazed look on the bright side of life…that finds laughter the most appropriate response.” Too bad this appropriate response seems non-existent, though I’m willing to suggest that Spanish humor (at least for me) does not survive the trip across the Atlantic.

Still, the studio expects quite a bit from the movie. At a recent screening, critics received glossy publicity magazines which features one picture on page three of passengers and crew having a rollicking good time, though that scene does not appear in this 92-minute cut.

Rated R. 92 minutes © 2013 by Harvey Karten, Member, New York Film Critics Online

Overall – C