embarrassingly bad

Rating: 2/10 (4 October 2009)

"Vicky Christina Barcelona" will be praised by the few remaining Woody Allen fans and condemned by the rest of us, whose model for drama is derived from classic Greek theater. The demands for statement of circumstance, a crescendo of conflict rising to a crisis, a resolution of the crisis, and a brief concluding summary are missing from VCB. The convention of character change -- Othello changing into a wife murderer, Hamlet deteriorating into madness, Scout's discovery of important life values in "To Kill a Mockingbird" -- is also missing. The usual expectation that minor characters are introduced into a story if they have some purpose, is ignored. And of course, the common convention of a plot, as opposed to a vignette, is nowhere on the horizon. The extensive use of anonymous voice-over narration does not salvage this wreck and only leaves the audience annoyed and patronized.
It is worth speculating that if someone else had proposed to make this same movie, someone previously unknown, it never would have gotten financed.
Vicky and Christina are not believable from their first introduction. That the stiff and conservative Vicky would have traveled to a foreign country with the impulsive and directionless Christina to spend two months together is inconceivable. Given that the initial premise fails, the rest is an embarrassing exploration of an old man's fantasy about two young women.
At one point Vicky meets a young man in a language class, another possible diversion for her. Although he seems dramatically interesting, he disappears after his one brief scene. His exchange with Vicky adds nothing to her self-awareness or any other aspect of the movie. The scene could have been cut entirely with no consequence except elimination of any expectation in the audience that the young man might have some purpose in the film.
When the endless display of self-descriptions by each of the characters becomes tiresome to all, including the characters, we experience a classic "deus ex machina." Maria Elena is dropped into the little that remains and fires off a few sobering rounds.
The movie ends pretty much where it began. Vicky is the same Vicky, conservative, now married, willing to make the same compromises she has always made. Christina is still floundering around trying to discover herself. Whose movie was this? Was it Vicky's or Christina's? In the end neither of them holds our interest.