Call TV

No pun intended - the movie is quite ... well bizarre. A spanish movie that is out there and has jokes ... well humor that not everyone will dig. Not everyone has the same sense of humor. And you have to suspend your disbelief and really give the movie the benefit of the doubt ... and also really like silly humor.

The movie has interesting twists, but does not make much sense .. if any at all. There is some violence, there is some nudity, though not really if you think about it ... but I imagine that some will still be outraged by whatever is shown here - for anyone who's thinking about watching this: maybe watch the trailer first to get a feeling how this handles stuff ... so you don't waste your time in case ...

Lucía is an actress who, following an on set tragedy, has found work on a late night phone-in TV 'quiz' show. Her job is to ask simple questions then keep callers on the premium number line for as long as possible. She has barely started her job when she gets a strange and somewhat menacing call. Things are about to get very strange and more than a little bloody for Lucía, her director, one particular viewer and various people close to them.

Having just watched this I'm unsure what to make of it. It was bizarre in a surreal way. Half of me thinks it was a terrible mess the other wonders if it was a work of twisted genius. The acting is the sort of exaggerated hamminess that must surely have been deliberate. Similarly the effects are bargain basement but again this felt intended; most obviously the vivid red blood used in the many violent scenes. There are moments if hilarity; notably a victim and his murder discussing various Star Wars films as he lied dying! I can understand why this got a low score, I wouldn't have been surprised if it was even lower, but strangely I ended up enjoying it so would recommend it to fans of the strange looking for something under ninety minutes long on Netflix.

These comments are based on watching the film in Spanish with English subtitles.

Ah yes, the eternal question: can you make a good movie if you're stoned out of your mind?

Followed up by: Is Nicholas Cage a good actor? Can 'Easy Rider' be reproduced but instead of the actors, the screenwriters will be the ones high?

In this case, big ol' NO!

Or as the Christmas carol goes, Dashing Through The NO, this will NOt be succesfull. So sadly, Call TV is annoyingly at best, incoherent most of the time and truly a bad way of spending your time.

I can understand why the script got greenlighted, perhaps in order to see if there is something remarkable and abstract about it, but once it was finished...it should have been burned. Nobody should have seen this, right there with Al Pacino's Dunkin' Donuts.

Rarely have I seen a bad Spanish production but this one takes the cake.

Cheers!