216) The Linguini Incident (1991)

216) The Linguini Incident (1991) Dir: Richard Shepard Date Released: May 1992 Date Seen: July 18th, 2009 Rating: 0.75/5

The Linguini Incident is the kind of bad, bad, no-good comedy that is top-to-bottom incomprehensible. There is no proof of a guiding intelligence to the film, no suggestion of sustained vision in its storytelling and no concept of how to keep the audience from laughing with instead of at its miserable attempts at exasperated slapstick humor. 

For proof of its incoherence, just look at the totally mixed-up plot (it's not mixed-up in a kooky, what-were-those-crazy-kids-thinking kinda way but rather an exasperating, oh-god-my-eyes-they-burn-and-I-can't-stop-screaming kinda way: David Bowie plays an immigrant waiter at an upscale Salvador Dali-themed restaurant. To get his Green Card, he's out to marry any creature blessed with eye shadow. After meeting Rosanna Arquette, a waitress and aspiring escape artist, he settles for robbing the restaurant they work in so he can afford to woo her with a Houdini-related tchatchky so she'll tie the knot with him. Where do I begin? When does it end? 

There are glimmers of cogent ideas that might've made for a modest failure of a satire--the rich are fascinated by little bobo jailbait that rob them while wearing brazzierres with switchblades for nipples, which is I guess some kind of funhouse response to Giuliani Time paranoia, but um, really? Knife Nipples? This makes Ms. 45 look punchy--but they never take center stage. Instead, the audience is left wondering at David Bowie's mismatched contacts and ever-changing coiff and Rosanna Arquette's more-than slightly BDSM-like proclivities (heels and cuffs and nooses, oh my!). Hours later, I'm still dumbfounded. What corner of Hell did I dredge this thing up from exactly?

Note: Shepard did The Matador in 2005. WHAAAAAAAAAAA?!