Apple, The |
  • USA / West Germany • 1980 • 90m •    • Directed by: Menahem Golan. • Starring: Catherine Mary Stewart, George Gilmour, Grace Kennedy, Allan Love, Joss Ackland, Vladek Sheybal, Ray Shell, Miriam Margolyes, Derek Deadman, Michael Logan, George S. Clinton, Francesca Poston, Leslie Meadows. • Music by: Coby Recht.      Alphie and Bibi, two sweet, naive youths from Moose Jaw, Canada, have come to America to compete in the 1994 Worldvision Song Festival. Although the pair have talent, they are beaten out by the underhanded tactics of the festival favorites, another duo with the backing of BIM: Boogalow International Music, and its leader, Mr. Boogalow. Though crestfallen by their loss, Bibi and Alphie are soon delighted to hear that Mr. Boogalow has taken an interest in their music and wants to sign them to his label. All is looking up for the two until they begin to discover the dark underside of the rock and roll world.
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Review:
Not a good thing to make a rock musical whose music is almost relentlessly this bad. I actually had to turn off the sound during "BIM's on the Way" (the anthem of the evil music corporation that is somehow taking over the world, or at least America), for fear the inanely repetitive thing would be stuck in my head indefinitely. "Master," a reggae tune, was discomfiting. And I flat-out cringed as the displaced star Pandi crooned while seducing the hero after drugging him. The title, "Coming," is a double entendre, but the verse jettisons any attempt at subtlety, preferring to hit the listener on the head with, say, a metal fire extinguisher: "I want it harder and harder, and faster and faster And when you think you can't keep it up I'll take you deeper and deeper, and tighter and tighter And drain every drop of your love." That little ditty is backed by half a dozen slightly clad dance couples apparently making themselves into human seesaws on beds scattered cleverly about what must be the orgy room. One cannot help but wonder if American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance media mogul Nigel Lythgoe lives in fear that the American mainstream will discover this movie and learn the awful truth that he choreographed it.
Whoever sings for the female lead (I saw the credit but forgot it) has a decent voice, as does the male protagonist. And they have a rather enjoyable and sad duet, separated by circumstance and space, on "Cry for Me." But don't worry. That experience was strictly anomalous.
Most of the dance scenes are as bad as the songs, although the chorus boys have a couple nice routines. (Lythgoe was once one, so perhaps no surprise that those were the strongest dancers with the best routines.) Finally, BIM can't seem to get a grip on what sort of music it espouses: hair band at the beginning, disco later, and while the Captain & Tennille sorts of offerings from the protagonists are ridiculed at first, they seem to be what BIM is buying later.
The costumes are completely over the top and don't make much sense a lot of the time, which is fine, I suppose, because neither does the plot (just think every annoying attempted buy-in to youth culture you ever ran into), and the clothes and makeup are kind of fun to look at. (Well, except for the truly annoying, cheesy-looking BIM patches that everyone is made to wear.) This rock musical has more than a little of a gay glam film to it as well---loads of gold lame' briefs on the boys, and enough body glitter and pancake makeup to send me into sneezing fits just looking at it all.
What becomes of our protagonists and the final reckoning for BIM's evil Dr. Boogalow comes straight out of left field. I won't post it here even with a spoiler alert. It's just too weird. Suffice to say that at least I have never seen anything quite like it, and I've seen an awful lot of movies.
Review by Bou from the Internet Movie Database.
Movie Database