Rhapsodies

This week I decided to clean my palette a little bit with my favorite genre, Science fiction. The problem with having a favorite genre is after a while you’ve seen all of the good stuff, and in one’s search for new material, you’re going to go in some strange and interesting directions.

This week those directions took me to Spanish Language Science Fiction Comedies.

The first film on my list was the Spanish Film Acción mutante (Mutant Action) directed by Álex de la Iglesia. In a dark future apocalypse, the world is ruled by the beautiful people, leaving everyone else destitute. Rising to fight them are the Acción mutante, a band of crippled and damaged terrorist freedom fighters who consider themselves mutants. Together they target fashion models, dietitians, bodybuilders and anyone else who would tread on them with their stylish fashionable shoes.

Regrettably, they are not very good at their job and in the past couple of years they have had failure after failure, leaving them fractured and fighting amongst themselves. When they are at their lowest, their former leader, Ramón Yarritu (Antonio Resines) is let out of prison. He plans to lead them in their final mission. The kidnapping of Patricia Orujo (Frédérique Feder) the beautiful daughter and heiress of billionaire oligarch, Lord Orujo (Fernando Guillén)

I’m definitely going to put this on my guilty pleasure list. Definitely not a masterpiece, it still made me laugh. The satire was a bit heavy-handed and it was hard to take anyone’s side. While the Acción mutante were incompetent, they were still violent terrorists, which makes it hard to watch at times.

The funniest part of it for me was in the second act where Patricia comes down with a case of Stockholm Syndrome and starts spouting dogma, to the annoyance of Ramón.

The next film on my list was Buster Keaton’s last starring role. The Mexican film Boom in the Moon (El Moderno Barba Azul) by Jaime Salvador. Keaton plays a shipwrecked sailor left drifting in a lifeboat in the middle of World War II. Months later, he comes aground on the Mexican coast, which he mistakes for Japan.

Not realizing Japan has surrendered, he turns himself into the authorities as a prisoner of war.

While he is in prison he is mistaken for a “Bluebeard” serial killer. He is given the choice of the electric chair or the chance to pilot an experimental rocket to the moon… being executed has never been more tempting.

This was… okay. It mostly is dependent on mistaken identity and half the time it was reminding me of the plot of Abbot and Costello go to Mars.

In the end, it’s Keaton’s physical comedy that holds this film together. The best part was where he’s given the most tired of tired old nags to ride. He briefly unintentionally escapes from his captors, not by running away but by lagging so far behind they lose him.