Golden
Balls (1/2
star)
review by Jon
Waterman
Benito has a dream. I’d call it the American dream,
but he’s in Spain, so I won’t. But the same concept
applies. He’s looking for massive wealth and power. For
a while, he’s all talk. That is, until he finds out that
his best friend is sleeping with his girlfriend. He disowns
both of them and with nothing left to lose, he dives head first
into his newly formed business. Soon, he’s making deals
and becoming the biggest real estate developer the country
has seen looking to build the tallest building the country
has ever seen. In business, you need “Huevos de Oro.”
What an odd, pointless exercise of a movie this is. There’s
nothing here of any substance or meaning. There’s also
nothing here that allows you to connect with the picture in
any way. Benito is a reprehensible, smarmy guy that we are
forced to follow around. His self-centered, womanizing, ignorant
attitudes are not fun to watch at all. I honestly didn’t
care about him enough to enjoy his rise to power or enough
to take pleasure in his weak moments. You also can’t
build any sympathy for the women in his life, because they’re
idiots, too. Who befriends their husband’s mistress within
a couple hours of learning of each other to the point where
they can share the geometric shapes drawn on their boobs? And
who draws geometric shapes on people as a turn on? And who
watches this movie and likes it?
And what is going on with the timeline? Time fast-forwards
in this thing like nobody’s business, without an inkling
that it’s actually happening. It’s almost as if
every single cut represents a week or month’s passage
of time. A change in scenery could mean years. What this means
for us is that we don’t get to see the developments in
Benito’s character. He’s just all of a sudden a
new person, whether that means he’s more business savvy,
bitterer, more desperate, etc. We miss out on watching him
grow, which makes us less involved in his life and thus the
picture.
The movie is strange. Benito is a very quirky character that
has a lot of potential. Unfortunately, we’re not allowed
inside his mind. So that makes him shallow (and so are the
rest of the characters). If we wanted to watch shallow people
live, we wouldn’t watch movies. There’s really
nothing good I can say about this movie, except that it’s
not god-awful. I have seen worse. It’s just that like
Benito, this film has no redeeming qualities.
respond to jon@filmbrats.com
|