Customer Reviews

Spanish Fly

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This movie is about a woman who goes to Madrid to write about "machismo", and believing in the old stereotype that all Spaniards are machistas she embarks in a futile search for the ultimate macho. It was a horrible movie with horrible dialogue and force acting. The main female character lack desirability, and in the scenes that were suppose to look or be sexy, she failed miserably. The translator, a macho Spaniard and an Antonio Banderas aficionado, only looked well with his mouth tightly seal. I don't recommend this atrocious experiment.

Spanish Fly is an atrocity. It's a poorly scripted, unrealistic, and totally un-engaging film full of horrible dialogue and ridiculous twists. How the Los Angeles Times called this is a "Smart, Winning, Romantic Comedy" is beyond me. I think the writer was either blackmailed or bribed by the filmmaker, writer/director/star Daphna Kastner, Harvey Keitel's wife.

Basically the idea is this: an unattractive frumpish American girl goes to Madrid with an advance from a publishing company to write a book about "macho" Spanish men. However, she knows no Spanish, nothing about men, and her attempts to organise a few half-baked ideas about her subject come to nothing, as does the half-baked premise of the film. The protagonist is totally unegaging to the point of being irritating, all the male characters are one-dimensional props to support the film's fragile premise, and the caricature of Madrid as a steamy hothouse of hormone-filled men clutching submissive women in every nook and cranny is incredibly insulting.

This is an embarrassingly ill-conceived film which becomes more and more banal as it goes on. The film reaches the level of horribleness that "Gigli" did. Kastnar was horrid and probably wrote the film, ripe with plenty of sex scenes for herself, to get to go to bed with attractive Spanish men and show off her unimpressive body. I can't think of another reason this film would be written and shot. I'm shocked and horrified at how the filmmaker was not only allowed to make this film, but had a respectable company like MIRAMAX release it. Something's not right here. Avoid this one like the plague, unless you need something to laugh at with your bottle of wine.