Buy posters from this movie

This movie sucks. Of course I'd already known this fact - despite never even seeing the movie for myself. Blame It on Rio is one of those movies that I somehow managed to avoid seeing since its release in 1984, and oddly enough my life still managed to have some small semblance of meaning. So when my editor included this movie in a batch of DVDs for me to review, a dark cloud began to envelop my brain. Despite the fact that I'm a devious little worm most of the time, I refuse to review a movie unless I've actually watched it - which meant I would soon be spending 90 minutes in hell.

A few days later I had a fever of 102.9. (Oddly enough 102.9 is also my favorite radio station here in Philadelphia, but I'll leave you to ruminate on the karmic significance of that.) It was a bad time for me, as I'm not a real big fan of massive phlegm deposits or involuntary defecating. Simply put, I was ill. So what better time to pop in a DVD that I knew would make me sick anyway?

To say this is an awful movie is like saying that air is plentiful. The true wretched depths to which this film stoops are second only to that really big abyss that Ed Harris fell down in...The Abyss. If you dug into the earth's core and flung aside all the magma and stuff, you'd find an infinite number of Blame It on Rio DVDs.

In the interest of actually mentioning the plot and stuff, I'll take a brief respite from my magma-slinging and pretend that this is a real movie:

Michael Caine is a blobby sleaze. Joseph Bologna is his annoying friend. They both have teenage daughters. All four of them go to Rio de Janiero. Two of the four have intercourse. Stop me when this gets funny. There are bare breasts and leering innuendos, subtle incest gags and middle-age spare tires, contrived plot devices, banter so grating that it could easily remove grape juice stains and the worst music I've heard since my car ran over three kittens and a homeless man.

This movie was made in 1984, when the entire concept of "divorce" was evidently considered the peak of all things hilarious. Caine's charcter is losing his wife, but since she's played by Valerie Harper, it's cool. Bologna's wife is long gone, most likely because this guy makes Steve Buscemi on downers look like Mick Jagger on acid. If you can find a less likable pair of men than these two, feel free to simply kill them. What these two clueless divorcee idiots lack in charm and personality, their two daughters easily make up for in blank stares and bare breasts.

(I'm sitting here right now trying to come up with how I should approach the next paragraph, completely depressed that I'm writing a review on a movie about a middle-aged fart who humps his best friend's teenage daughter. Give me a minute.)

This movie just sucks on every conceivable level. As far as sucking is concerned, Blame It on Rio is second only to the entire universe in the vacuum department. Bologna and Caine try in vain to infuse a kind of 'witty buddy banter' throughout the course of the flick, and if you don't find yourself throwing feces at your own television screen while watching this movie, then you might be watching it on mute.

So what else is there? Oh yeah, Michele Johnson. Back in the early eighties, I think she may have been seen as one of those "next big thing" girlies. But that memory could just be false memories predicated by her numerous bare boobies, so don't go by me. Aside from her rampant toplessness (which goes a long way in convincing me that she is indeed a female), nothing on display in this movie will ever make you think she could be aptly described as an actress. Translation: She sucks dry ice, nipples or no nipples.

Oooh, here's something: Demi Moore is in this one. She plays Daughter of Bologna, and her role is notable solely for two things:

1. She proves that she wasn't even a good actress when she was young.

2. She's not the exhibitionist that Michele Johnson obviously is, since in all Michele's booby scenes Demi has long flowing clumps of hair Krazy-Glued to her breasts. (Think Daryl Hannah's "breast avoidance" techniques in Splash and then amplify the stupidosity of that vision by about 3,000.)

If all that isn't depressing enough, get this:

Blame It on Rio was directed by Stanley Donen.

Movie fans who are familiar with Donen's work can feel free to blink now. That's right, kiddies! The director of such cinematic classics as Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Singin' in the Rain, Kismet and Damn Yankees ended his cinematic career with a movie about a tubby Englishman groping a topless 18-year old while Calypso music plays in the background.

I don't know on what planet this movie would be considered entertaining. I'm surprised that Michael Caine doesn't try to bury this one as if it consisted of tabloid pics of him in red overalls molesting a baby chimp with a thermometer. Humiliating, nauseating and pathetically unfunny, Blame It on Rio is a movie that exists solely to prove how truly bad movies can get, how low human beings can sink and how base we are as a species. That and the bare boobs.

All that stuff aside, here's what you need to know: This movie is not funny. At all. Zero laughs. Schindler's List has more punch lines than this flick...and the nude scenes are less uncomfortable to watch.

link directly to this review at http://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=3961&reviewer=128
originally posted: 08/12/01 03:46:53
 printer-friendly format