SOUL PLANE
[ 1/2] (One and one-half satrs)
Flying low. Running time: 86 minutes. Rated R (strong sexual content, language and some drug use.) At E-Walk, Loews Lincoln Square, Loews Orpheum, others.
THERE’S a surfeit of skanky sex talk aboard the urban spoof “Soul Plane,” but this one-joke comedy vehicle is flying through a laugh-free zone.
Joylessly directed by first-timer Jessey Terrero from a script by Bo Zenga and Chuck Wilson, “Soul Plane” aims high – for a kind of Wayans brothers meet “Airplane!” fusion – but doesn’t even get off the ground.
It’s the sort of movie that tries to milk laughs by naming a character Gaeman and calling the only white male in the cast Mr. Hunkee. It’s so clueless that it not only treats security issues as a huge joke but peppers the script with repeated (painfully unfunny) gags about Arabs.
And did we mention it stars Tom Arnold?
Within the first five minutes, a character is stricken with an attack of flatulence and diarrhea (ha ha) aboard a commercial flight.
After a series of unfortunate events, this man, Nashawn Wade (Kevin Hart), sues the airline, wins a settlement for $100 million and uses it to start his own airline, NWA, flying out of Terminal (Malcolm) X.
The rest of the movie is set during the inaugural flight of the airline’s sole plane – a purple party palace, with satin-clad flight attendants, a top-deck nightclub and a music video to replace the pre-flight safety instructions.
This is the perfunctory set-up to gather at 30,000 feet a bunch of disparate characters, including Nashawn’s ex-girlfriend (“Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s” K.D. Aubert), his cousin Muggsy (Method Man), a lecherous blind man (John Witherspoon) and a jailbait white girl (Arielle Kebbel, from TV’s “Gilmore Girls.”)
The dirty jokes flow as freely as the Cristal onboard “Soul Plane,” but the whole enterprise is distinctly lacking in flava.
Snoop Dogg, as the pot-smoking, magic-mushroom ingesting pilot Captain Mack, manages to amuse himself – and us – in his sleepy-eyed way, giving new meaning to the idea of a mile-high club.
*
WAKE
[] (One Star)
IF there is anything notable about the micro-budget indie “Wake” – and that’s a big if – it’s the opening and closing cameos by Martin Landau, who happens to be the director’s father-in-law.
Otherwise, director-writer Henry LeRoy Finch’s feature debut is strictly straight-to-video fodder.
The story takes place on one boozy evening in an old house in Maine.
Upstairs, a frail, elderly woman lies dying.
Downstairs, her four dysfunctional sons – an escaped con, a mental patient, etc. – argue over what to do with their mom, confront long-standing issues and hunt for their father’s hidden loot. Violence flares.
Finch’s wandering script gives us little reason to care about any of the characters, even the dying mother.
Watching “Wake” is akin to listening to anonymous neighbors argue about matters you know nothing about – nor care about. You only wish they’d shut up.
Running time: 94 minutes. Not rated (violence, language). At the Quad, 13th Street, between Fifth and Sixth avenues.
– V.A. Musetto
*
ADORED: DIARY OF A MALE PORN STAR
[] (One star)
THERE are long stretches of “Adored” when you feel it must be intended as a spoof.
But the appalling Italian pop music, the hilariously awful acting, the campy melodrama and the deluded preening of star, writer and director, Marco Filiberti, are all meant quite seriously.
And though the film has its heart in the right place (there’s a sequence in which the porn star hero is cruelly denied the right to adopt a child he loves), its self-indulgence eventually beggars belief.
Filiberti plays Riki Kandinsky, a supposedly witty and charming porn star living in Rome who has hidden his occupation from his ludicrously uptight, aristocratic family.
When his father dies, Riki’s brother Federico comes to Rome from the family castle in France and is shocked to discover Riki’s source of income.
But after a few nights of clubbing, Federico finds himself reexamining his own relationships, while Riki realizes that he misses being in a family.
Not only is “Adored” amateurish and mawkish even by the standards of American “gaysploitation” cinema, it’s weirdly shy about showing nudity and sex.
Running time: 101 minutes. Not rated (sexuality, sex talk, language). In Italian, with English subtitles. At the Cinema Village, 12th Street, east of Fifth Avenue.
– Jonathan Foreman