Manolo - You Should Have Called Dude

Rating: 7/10 (12 July 2006)

Since this movie has been dissected to bits by everyone, here are a few trivial observations:
Was I the only one who thought that stupid clown Octavio deserved to get blasted? What kind of act was that - a big-headed dancing clown that only someone high on coke would find amusing?
The song they were playing at Club Babylon: "llelo," were they singing about crack? Was everyone dancing to some cocaine anthem or what? All of the music was pretty awful and I can't imagine anyone actually wanting to dance to any of it.
What was with Gina's afro? Did she and Tony have different fathers? She looked like a white man's version of what a Cuban woman should look like - Puerto Rican/Cuban/whatever - we'll just darken her skin, give her a stupid accent and an afro. If her mother raised her to be an honest, hardworking, respectable young lady, would a few thousand dollars immediately turn her into a coke snorting, ditsy tramp who had no more self respect than to let some "lounge lizard" fondle her rear end in a toilet stall?
Why didn't Manolo simply tell Tony that he and Gina were married. If he was afraid of him - use the phone. Even if Tony hadn't been such a psycho, he would have still been p*ssed that his best friend didn't think enough of him to let him know that his sister was all right. Manny had the mother worried that something had happened to her. Why didn't they invite the mother to the wedding - why sneak off and wait to be found out?
When Gina had the gun on Tony, he seemed like he was enjoying watching her robe open and close instead of being concerned that she might actually kill him. Why did the contract killer blow Gina away first when they both seemed to have the same objective? Why not simply start blasting Tony? If Alejandro Soso could get such a large group of trained killers to invade Tony's estate, why didn't he use some of them to get rid of the politician instead of asking Tony to do it?
When Tony's mother was talking to him in her kitchen, why did she say "We haven't seen you for five years, and then immediately repeats "five years" in Spanish - That's right, throw in a couple of Spanish words to remind us that these were Cuban immigrants. The whole speech should have been in Spanish if they wanted to be authentic. She really seemed like a crappy mom anyway for all her talk about "You give hardworking Cubans a bad name." What was she doing during his formative years in Cuba? She should have been tough with him then, when it mattered. Even though she apparently attempted to raise Gina "right," she wasn't exactly a credit to her upbringing either.
Did Elvira have any parents or friends? How did a seemingly middle class white girl get mixed up with a Cuban drug dealer like Frank in the first place? Talk about a cardboard character, we knew practically nothing about her. Why on earth would she even have been attracted to Tony Montana? Seems like she was better off with Frank.
Tony was too arrogant to realize how stupid, uneducated and uncouth he was. When he had lunch at Sosa's house, he was ignorant enough to eat the lemon out of his finger bowl. I'll bet by the end of the movie, he would have done the same thing. His character never evolved from being a heartless, uneducated, cold-blooded thug. That haircut and those horrible, tacky clothes: why didn't someone suggest a different hairstyle for him, or at least tell him where to buy a few quality suits?