Review of Eating Raoul (1982) by Edith N — 15 Oct 2009

Not as Funny as It's Trying to Be.

Okay, let me start here. The title drives me crazy. Not because it gives away the last about five minutes of the movie, if that, though that's certainly an issue. No, my problem is the spelling of the name. "Raoul" is the French variant. Given the phonetic nature of Spanish, it would be pronounced "Rah-oh-ool." All things considered, if I didn't know how to spell the Spanish version, it would be more than a little unusual. Especially because, if I remember correctly, one of the people who has advised me to watch this in the first place was, well, Raul. Pronounced, as the character in the movie pronounces it, "Rah-ool." Thinking about it, I think the logo would be a little off, but that shouldn't drive a title.

Paul (Paul Bartel) and Mary (Mary Woronov) Bland want to start a restaurant. She's a decent cook, and he knows a lot about wine. Sure, they've never had anything to do with a restaurant before, but everyone has to start somewhere, right? Only where they have to start is with twenty thousand dollars. And they don't even have enough to pay their rent. It's a problem. Not only that, but they seem to live in the most decadent, unpleasant version of Hollywood imaginable. One night, someone comes in and very nearly rapes Mary. Paul wallops him with a frying pan and kills him. They discover that he has six hundred dollars in his wallet, and they decide to run with it, setting up "swingers" to kill them and steal their money.

It's a so-so movie, the kind that kind of makes me want to limit myself to three ratings, along the lines of the current [i]At the Movies[/i] system. (Roger's trademarked the thumbs.) Putting a number on it is a little difficult. I like the concept a lot. It's amusing, certainly. I think it's supposed to be a satire, but if so, it's a satire which loses its way. For one thing, the pure degenerate nature of essentially everyone but the too-aptly-named Blands. It's okay that they set people up to murder them, because they're perverts and deviants. Or perhaps the Blands, for all they think they're better than everyone else, are just as degenerate. On the other hand, Mary nearly gets raped two or three times, making those at least cases of self-defense.

And let's talk about Raul (Robert Beltran). He kind of appears out of nowhere and helps them deal with their new life of crime. He might be encouraging Mary to loosen up, but it doesn't seem to really change her at heart. And even if it does, Paul only gets more uptight, because he's not okay with Mary having an affair for some reason. I think he's supposed to indicate that the world will intervene no matter what, or perhaps he's supposed to mean that everyone has something different inside. Or something. He's also getting more out of them than they know. Certainly he's getting things out of Mary that aren't reliably what they ought to. The whole situation with the Blands and Raul kind of seems to drive the whole thing off track.

Okay, not a bad movie, all told. However, there's a certain amount of overdoneness to the movie. For one thing, the Blands? Really? Can it be more symbolic? The filming's kind of meh. The story's fun, but I don't think it's done terribly well. The script isn't great, though it isn't bad. If it were less unpleasant out there, if the life the Blands wanted to live weren't so disconnected from everyone else, tehre might be something more intriguing. However, the world they live in is a little, again, overdone. The very fact that Mary almost gets raped once or twice. The patient who thinks she's going to have sex with him in her hospital room. The fact that she does have sex with Raul in a hospital room. It just gets boring, honestly, and I think that's a shame. It detracts from an otherwise interesting movie.