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- "Woman on Top"
(Reviewed September 13, 2000)
- You won't believe what a disastrous wrong turn this movie takes at about the half-hour mark. You will stare in complete disbelief, your mouth hanging open in stunned
stupefaction,
as you watch this movie commit suicide before your very eyes. If you are like me, you will want to stand up, shake a fist at the screen, and curse the filmmakers for sabotaging their own project.
"Woman on Top" starts out as a light, breezy, cheap and cheerfully empty-headed movie centered on Isabella, a naive Brazilian girl played by the indescribably beautiful Penelope Cruz. (Honest to God, this
woman has the best-looking hair you ever will see in your life--and the rest of her is just as amazing.) She is a cook married to the owner of a beach restaurant. The first time the voice-over narrator mentions
Isabella's unearthly kitchen abilities, it is obvious that the screenwriter has "borrowed" a lot from the (vastly superior) "Like Water for Chocolate." But Isabella is so sunny, pretty and effortlessly sultry that
it is
hard to let a niggling little annoyance like plagiarism ruin the show.
Isabella catches her husband cheating, packs her bags, and flies to San Francisco. In fable-like fashion (a drop of her sweat makes a flower bloom, and the mere sight of her attracts hundreds of
men
to follow her as she walks obliviously down a street), Isabella quickly lands her own TV cooking show. Watching her charm and entrance everyone in sight is a sheer pleasure. Think of the "Mary Tyler
Moore" show, except that the girl who's gonna make it after all is a shy, big-eyed Brazilian beauty who likes to show lots and lots of cleavage.
So far, so good, right? But instead of sticking with
Isabella turning the world on with her smile, the filmmakers take a movie that all seems worthwhile and turn it into a nothing day. The last two-thirds of the film are about Isabella's very unappealing
husband
(imagine a duller version of Antonio Banderas) trying to win Isabella back. What kind of clueless idiots would think it was a good idea to shift the viewpoint character in this movie from Isabella to her
mopey,
stubble-faced cheating husband? Did the writer, director and producer all go hopelessly insane after eating some tainted toothfish for lunch one day? "Hey, even though we have one of the world's most
beautiful women as our star, let's change the focus to concentrate on the second-rate Zorro who plays her hubbie!" I was so mad I could
have squashed a grape.
(Odd comparison: A fellow writer said he thought "Hollow Man" tanked because "you can't ask the audience to root for Kevin Bacon at the beginning of the movie, but
then
flip protagonists halfway through and expect them to start cheering for Josh Brolin instead." In the same way, it was just plain crazy for the makers of "Woman on Top" to make us fall in love with Penelope
Cruz's character at the beginning, but then to start portraying her as heartless and mean for not wanting to get back together with her philandering husband.) (And what's the deal lately with movies
portraying
cheating husbands as nice guys who deserve judgment-free compassion and complete forgiveness? First there was last week's god-awful "Just Looking," now this. Obviously, we have entered the
Post-Clinton age
of consequence-free immorality, in which women should be perfectly willing to be treated like doormats because, hey, "Guys is guys!") (Christ, that sounded almost feminist...somebody slap me.)
I can't give this movie a failing grade because, what the hell, Penelope Cruz is great to ogle, even if she should have held out for a better script. (But note that, despite its provocative title, the film
contains absolutely no nudity, unless you count a quick glimpse of Cruz's unclad flank viewed in profile during a short bed scene.)
Back Row Grade: D
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