WasAnnon Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

PodBill Just what I expected

Supelice Dreadfully Boring

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

sol- More of an ensemble comedy than one would expect for a film titled after a single character, 'Kika' focuses on how the lives of several Spaniards intersect, including a widowed author, his jaded son, the son's reporter ex-girlfriend, a porn star, the porn star's lesbian sister and the makeup artist the sister fancies. It takes quite a while for the trajectories of the characters to overlap and 'Kika' seems a little all over the place at first with bizarre seemingly random incidents like a graveyard murder and placing makeup on a sleeping man thought dead. As the movie progresses though, everything fits into place surprisingly well with the highlight being arguably the funniest rape scene ever filmed. While a comical treatment of the subject might sound in bad taste, the media frenzy that the rape causes in the film makes for an excellent satirical target. The film is less about mocking rape and more about public nonchalance towards it. Almodóvar's satire would have, however, benefited from the rape occurring earlier with more focus on the aftermath and Victoria Abril who, dressed in full-body camera-suit (!), films and unthinkingly broadcast it. There is also a great twist with Peter Coyote's character that deserves more screen time rather than being thrown in at the end, but for all its unevenness and roundabout first half hour, 'Kika' is a reasonably involving motion picture at the end of the day.

The_Film_Cricket There is no director whose films embody the strange spirit of the new wave movement of the 60s like Pedro Almadovar. His weird, disjointed and patently bizarre works are a breath of fresh air given that we live with movies that come out of a Hollywood that prefers that directors just bow their heads and do as they are told. His most striking works came before his notoriety with the overrated 'Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown'. Before that he fleshed out such singular masterpieces as 'Law of Desire' and 'What Have I Done to Deserve This?'. No film since 'Women' (until the recent 'All About My Mother') has captured his pre-fame brilliance and during that dry spell came one of the worst, a little disappointment named 'Kika'.The main topic of discussion given to 'Kika' has been it's politically incorrect rape scene played here for laughs but comes off as ridiculous and uncomfortable. But seething around that scene is Almadovar's target - the rape given by the media into the private lives of anyone who ever takes their clothes off. The villain of the piece is a tabloid journalist named Andrea Scarface who runs a hot TV show called 'Today's Worst' and buzzes around on a motorcycle with a camera mounted on her helmet hoping to catch crimes as they happen.Andrea's former lover is now seeing the title character, a shapely cosmetologist with a big mouth named Kika whose personality is infectious but (I believe) would have been better served in a different movie.Kika is currently being lusted after by her lesbian maid (Almadovar regular Rossy de Palma) and the maid has a chauvinistic brother who is not only an ex-porn star but who's first day out of jail leads to aforementioned rape scene. Also attached to the story is an expatriate writer (Peter Coyote) whose wife's murder remains a mystery and has driven him nearly comatose.'Kika' feels like a first draft, there is little interest in the underwritten characters and most of the outrageous scenes exist, not for laughs but just for the sake of being outrageous. It lays a lot of characters on the canvas but can't find a use for them outside of their introductory status. This is a minor effort in which the biggest joke is really on the viewer.

imthefiction What everyone in the press seemed to miss about this film was that it was a spoof on the media and especially the talk show mentality which has come to dominate our lives. The central figure of the film is not so much Kika as it is Caracortada (scarface) who runs a real life television program featuring live footage from video cameras. She chases down much of this footage herself, having a camera inserted into a helmet and flying around town on a motor scooter. We are drawn into this web -- during the middle of a rape sequence, the rapist actually says something funny -- and in the audience with whom I saw the film when it premiered, many laughed (and then somehow gasped that they were laughing in the middle of a rape scene). That is as nearly perfect as black comedy gets. Following the rape, Caracortada interviews the victim and asks "How big was he?" Isn't this indicative of the intrusiveness of media in our lives? How did the press and so many commentators miss it?

filfy-2 Although the film is ostensibly about "Kika," she is actually only one character featured in this raunchy, ensemble comedy.The plot here is all over the place! This is not necessarily bad--one character ties into another character's life and the focus of the movie moves in a circular manner which eventually returns to our heroine, the naive but lovable Kika (well-portrayed by Verónica Forqué).This film is funny! It's a combination of "There's Something About Mary," Woody Allen at his zaniest, and "Sex and the City." Good for a laugh, especially for the poor dubbing of Peter Coyote's Spanish.