Review of Volver (2006) by Danield. — 05 Feb 2007

It appears that most everyone who saw this film gave it a 9 or 10. A few gave it low scores and almost no one put it in the middle. So this is another "love it or hate it" sort of film. I have to put myself in the second category.

Although I greatly enjoyed watching Penelope Cruz -- without her the movie goes down to a 1 or 2 -- it's obvious no one else in the movie did. HUH? Here's a woman so lustrously beautiful she positively shines and one guy -- count him, one! -- notices her appearance.

Okay, her husband must have at one time and maybe her father, but come on! This in Spain of all places. A few other impossiblities include that Penelope's character, having just "taken over" a restaurant after somehow disappearing from her regular cleaning job, can prepare and serve up a meal to 30 people with only a couple hours notice, that four women can lift up a freezer with a dead guy in it into a van, and that it's no problem to bury a guy four or five feet deep next to large trees where the ground has no roots, no rocks, and no other things I somehow always run into in my garden.

Not to mention that a whole town somehow believes in a ghost who has to shop for supplies at the market. Maybe I was not enthralled by the whimsical spirit of the whole thing, but hey, that's just me, I guess.

Finally, the big raison d'etre behind Penelope's psychology was a blatant and transparent ripoff from Chinatown (daughter, sister, daughter, sister). Gotta go. My girlfriend just invited me over to watch Midsummer's Night Dream.

Don't know much about it, but I'm sure I'll love it.