Barcelona (1994)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Overrated and overhyped

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

While nowhere near as great as the last Whit Stillman film I saw ("Last Days of Disco"), I cannot deny "Barcelona" is a pretty impressive achievement for one reason above all that is largely personal to me and me alone. I found the first half hour of the film to be pretty great; it's funny, witty, always entertaining and fun to watch. But then, for the next twenty five minutes or so the film just kind of lost a lot of its flare. It's hard to really explain, but the film was really starting to get on my nerves. I am one for unlikable characters, but many of the characters and many of their conversations weren't really only unlikable, but kind of annoying. There were many great little comical moments here, and Chris Eigeman's character was great and, to me, extremely likable as always, despite his sometimes obnoxious behavior, but, overall, this is where the movie fell flat for me, and I was ready to give it a bad review but THEN the last half hour rolls along and the film becomes absolutely brilliant and fixes all the problems I was having with it. It becomes much more dramatic, but still hilarious, and really helps one understand the characters and their relationships to that which surrounds them. The dialogue gets even better, and there is genuine heart placed perfectly within each scene. Even when the characters are not being exactly likable, there is a much less obnoxious flavor to them, and they are much more understandable and easy for me to get behind and (more importantly) actually enjoy watching. So, "Barcelona" is a really rare movie for me. It starts off great, becomes (at best) kind of irritating but still semi-entertaining, and then ends masterfully. If only that mid-section could at all match that which proceeds and follows it, then this film would be a true masterpiece and perhaps even superior to "The Last Days of Disco", a film that I feel is infinitely more rewatchable for the sole purpose of it never having a dull or "irritating" moment, no matter how likable or unlikable the characters' behavior may be.

During the 1980s, at the height of the Cold War, two American cousins and childhood friends, who are now a businessman and a naval officer (played by Taylor Nichols and Chris Eigeman) get to live some time in Barcelona, where they face (but finally overcome) the political distrust of many Spaniards. Director Whit Stillman lived some time in Spain and he surely based part of the movie on his own experiences. The movie is fine skewing the unthinking Antiamericanism of Europe's intellectual class (though Stillman is too much of a gentleman to be too biting in his criticism). Sometimes the dialogue is foolish when it tries to be witty (as when the Americans try to explain to some Spaniards the greatness of Hamburgers) but mostly the screenplay is quite fine. Stillman is an interesting filmmaker if only because his preppy conservative point of view is not often showed on movies. Mira Sorvino plays one of the Spanish girls in one of her earlier roles.

I saw this in the theatre when it came out and found it mildly amusing. But watching it at home recently was a dreary bore. To make matters worse, our political climate has rendered it completely obsolete. Much of the dialogue revolves around anti-American sentiment, which has only risen since the film's release. The Spaniards who seemed so harshly critical a decade ago seem to have had their stereotypes about the U.S. government validated.The two main characters who are supposed to be defending the U.S.'s reputation once seemed somewhat witty, now they come across as whiny, self-absorbed fools. "Ted" launches into a monologue in defense of hamburgers--of all things--as if they were what America was all about. Burgers even make an appearance later in the film, reminding us as viewers how superficial these people are.A couple of plot changes propelled the film into an unbelievable direction, and by the time the story wrapped up I had more than had my fill of these characters.The only thing that was of marginal interest was Mira Sorvino before her Oscar win made her well-known. She actually does come across as Spanish. Her character's not very likable either, but at least she's portrayed well. The script is really what's at fault, and having not liked "The Last Days of Disco", I am beginning to wonder if maybe it's not a bad thing writer/director Whit Stillman stopped making films after the 'nineties ended.

This is one of those movies that get better with age. I first saw it ten years ago, when Mira Sorvino was an unknown actress, and I was surprised to learn later that she wasn't really Spanish. (I lived in Spain for five years, so I'm not easily fooled.) If you've been to Barcelona, you'll like the glowing glimpses of the city, sun-drenched during the day, lit by neon and fireworks at night. There is much charming, often subtle, humor in the film. Who could resist Taylor Nichols dancing alone in his dining room while reading the Bible? Or Chris Eigeman using a felt tip pen to change anti-American graffiti from "American pigs" to "American deer"? Sure, the film is talky, but it doesn't take itself too too seriously.