333. Lena's Holiday

333. Lena’s Holiday (1991)
Director: Michael Keusch
Writers: Deborah Tilton and Michael Keusch
From: Cult Cinema

Lena, on holiday from Germany, has her luggage switched with someone being hunted by criminals and has to sort out what’s happened before the thugs catch up with her.

WHY?

A Marimark production. The second-to-last one I believe. This one’s from the director of Night Club which I described as “A dull, dull film that imagines you’ll endure its endless white boy whining for the thoroughly un-tittilating repetition of nudity. It’s not offensive, merely interminable.” Clearly, I had very high expectations going into this one, expectations that were not met.

The movie opens with archival footage of the Berlin Wall going up and being torn down over a hilariously bad song about the Wall coming down. I found the song on YouTube. The official video is pretty close to the opening of the movie and, honestly, more campy fun than anything the next 95 minutes of movie have to offer. You want a recommend, watch the video, laugh at them, and never look back.

The rest of the movie, by the way, has nothing to do with the Berlin Wall. Way to go guys! You added another standard by which to fail.

Anyway, Lena has just gotten off her plane in LA and is waiting for a cab. Julie walks up next to her with an identical bag, sees some men coming after her, and switches her bag for Lena’s. “Hilarious” hijinks ensue with Lena trying to get to her hotel without her reservation letter (one of the thugs has picked it up). Nothing matters because nothing happens. How have I managed to avoid nihilism after watching all these pointless movies?

She ends up at a photographer’s place, realizes she has the wrong bag (28 minutes into the movie), and stashes a box of condoms from the bag in the photographer’s house. For no reason except to make it narratively necessary for her to return later. She orders a cab which happens to be driven by the same cabbie that took her to the photographer’s place. They figure out where Julie lives, go there, and Lena finds her body. When she brings the cabbie in, the body is gone and he doesn’t believe her.

Then it’s her and the cabbie hanging out until the hour and 12 minute mark when they hook up and the cabbie finds a diamond in one of the two condoms that had remained in the bag. The next day Lena sees the cabbie handing over the diamond and other material to an armed man and getting a videotape in return. When she plays it, it’s surveillance footage of her from the moment of her arrival in LA. The thugs break in, take her to the photographer’s place, and have her hand over the condoms. As they’re leaving, the cabbie shows up, reveals he’s a cop, and arrests the villain. At the station, she’s angry with him for using her and he tries to apologize when they’re interrupted by a representative from the condom company. The bust has given them such great press that they want to reward the two of them with a lifetime supply of condoms and a vacation package. Lena takes the money instead, and then drives off to spend the rest of her Hollywood vacation with the cabbie/cop. THE END

Pat Morita’s in this movie. It’s a nothing part, but I was at once excited and disappointed to see him. Cause he’s fantastic and this is garbage.

This is such a simple plot, a very 80’s plot in fact. Swapped luggage gets our hero enmeshed in a diamond smuggling operation. The hero realizes something’s up, the villains have several near misses before realizing that the hero has the goods, and you have various set pieces that ramp up the risk. Adventures in Babysitting is an example. It’s a very simple formula.

Lena’s Holiday instead decides to eschew all of that and just have Lena hanging out in Hollywood at a cabbie’s place talking about how much she likes James Dean and Rebel Without a Cause. They go to the observatory from that movie. It’s bad enough taking time out of your bad movie to remind me of a better movie, don’t go to locations from that movie and have whole sequences dedicated to saying, “Remember that movie? That was a good movie. I really like that movie.”

The movie wants to be a comedy, but often fails to have jokes. Stuff just doesn’t happen. For 100 minutes. There isn’t even any music. Yes, there’s the opening song and a godawful amount of montages with music over them, but no general background music. Whenever there’s a scene with characters talking, it’s silent. So, as an audience, we’re not getting any cues of what the emotional tenor of the situation is supposed to be. I’ve mentioned other movies getting the tone wrong with their musical cues, but this one doesn’t use any at all. The effect is every scene is imbued with an accidental tension, especially the light and frivolous ones. All the silence made me worry that something was about to happen, that some grim revelation was about to come forth, and then nothing happens. Because it’s not a tense scene, it’s a comic scene.

Like so many Marimark productions, they took something promising and just ground it into nothing through a tireless dedication to mediocrity. Diamond smuggling in condoms is a good plot hook that you could do so much with—and not even just bawdy comedy. Instead, the plot isn’t used until the final half hour of the movie. That’s when we get all the stuff about smuggling and the villains coming for Lena. This felt like one of the longest movies I’ve watched for this project, and I watched the two-and-a-half hour cut of Virus. I had high hopes for this one, thinking that Marimark might have another Hunk within them. IMDB has this rated 5.5/10. I thought it might be an actual movie. I was wrong. Don’t make the mistake I did; don’t watch this movie.