The new film from Pedro Almodovar is set almost entirely on a plane. Due to faulty landing equipment, Peninsula Airlines flight 2549 to Mexico City is circling around Toledo waiting for a runway for an emergency landing.

The situation is dire but, as they wait for someone else to come up with a solution, the passenger and crew bicker and backstab, knock back booze and pills, get off with whoever is available and do lip sync routines to a Pointer Sisters disco classic.

The astute viewer will intuit early on that an allegory for Spanish economic woes is intended – that this is Almodovar's Plane of Fools. But, as the film goes on, the astute viewer will realise that he wasn't nearly as smart as he thought he was.

He may not be getting more right- wing as he gets older but the world's most acclaimed gay director has become markedly straighter as he has moved from provocateur to distinguished auteur. This, though, is a throwback to his early days, Passengers on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.

Except it isn't.

Though the trailer makes this look like a high camp sitcom nightmare cocktail of Come Fly With Me and The High Life, the reality is comparatively subdued – though it isn't intended to be.

The ingredients for high farce are all there, but drugged up and dopey. All the outrageous revelation and wild coincidences have no snap.

It isn't a terrible film and the time passes breezily enough. Bruna, a middle-aged physic virgin played by Lola Dueñas, is a quintessential Almodovar creation. Unlike Woody Allen, I'm not sure how much demand there is for him to go back to his earlier funnier films and, though this looks like his earlier efforts, it doesn't make you laugh like they did.

I'M SO EXCITED (15)

Director: Pedro Almodovar

Starring: Javier Camara, Pepa Charro, Antonio de la Torre, Hugo Silva, Raul Arevalo, Cecilia Roth, Blanca Suarez, Paz Vega and Miguel Angel Silvestre

Length: 90 mins

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