THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, September 9, 1994 TAG: 9409090076
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E11 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Teen [movie] review
SOURCE: BY TAMAR ANITAI, TEENOLOGY MOVIE CRITIC
LENGTH: Short : 50 lines
IF YOU CAN'T have one last vacation before school starts, you might as well imagine one. And why not a far-off cultural location?
``Barcelona,'' billed as ``superb, sophisticated, absorbing. . . '' (Jeffrey Lyons, Sneak Previews). Well swell, I thought, settling into my seat at the Naro, where I was bored to tears for the next two hours.
Filmed in the titled city, ``Barcelona'' focuses on the lives of two yuppie American cousins at the end of the Cold War. Ted Boynton, played by Taylor Nichols, is a Chicago salesman representing a motor company in Barcelona. He swears by self-motivation and success cassettes and feels obligated to analyze every aspect of his boring life. He's a nondescript, semineurotic Woody Allen type.
His life is interrupted by his more outgoing and slightly interesting Navy cousin, Fred (Chris Eigeman), whose pastimes are bar-hopping and frequenting the discos that seem to dominate the city.
Ted and Fred, being the strict yuppies that they are, hold opinions of foreign and domestic affairs contrary to those of the Barcelonians, who are primarily anti-American, anti-NATO. Fred lets a few too many controversial jokes slip, and he suddenly finds himself the target of political violence.
Throughout the movie, the cousins analyze, debate and criticize their theories on women, beauty, careers and the correct direction to shave. Their discussions left me baffled. I started to question my intellect and wondered if these people were of another realm of higher reasoning. Then I realized they were philosophizing about shaving, the idiots.
The blandness of their relationship led to my apathy about their lives. I had no emotional attachments to the characters because I was fed no relative or worthwhile information about them. I didn't care if they moved away, didn't get married, married each other or took up flamenco dancing. A movie that makes little effort to absorb the audience into the characters' lives risks being worthless.
Technically, Barcelona was flawless, but at the story line, the bottom fell through. Superb, sophisticated, and absorbing, Barcelona was anything but. Two thumbs down. MEMO: Tamar Anitai is a junior at First Colonial High School. ``Barcelona'' is
rated PG-13.
by CNB