I vomited two separate times while watching this movie. I suppose you could chalk that up to my having a fever of 102.4, but I’d rather believe that it was this vile, unfunny and overall awful pile of dreck that caused me to regurgitate repeatedly. It’s really that bad. I doubt that there was ever an era in which pedophilia and subtle incest jokes were considered the pinnacle of popular humour, but if there were, I suppose it would have been the early 1980s. Back in those days, just mentioning the words “knockers,” “wang” or “divorce” was a sure ticket to hilarity.
Michael Caine and Joseph Bologna play two middle-aged buddies named Matthew and Victor. Matthew’s cutie-pie teenage daughter is Nicole (Demi Moore) and Victor’s cutie-pie teenage daughter is Jennifer (Michelle Johnson). All four of them go on a vacation to Rio. Guess what happens? If you guessed “an ever-increasing series of pathetically unfunny sex gags, misunderstandings, awful attempts at ‘witty banter’, Michael Caine sleeping with his best friend’s young daughter, and a smattering of bare naked breasts,” you’d be only half right. And that’s the good half.
Over the course of his career, Caine has proved two things: A) He’s a fantastic actor, and B) He will take any part, anywhere, any time. If there’s a paycheque, an exotic locale, and a solid caterer, he’s in. (How else could you explain Caine skipping the Oscars in 1986 because he was off filming Jaws: The Revenge?) Bologna is only slightly less to blame, in that he’s not as big a star as Caine, and therefore obviously needs the work more. On the flip side, Bologna offers one his of his most grating and irritating performances ever… and that’s saying a lot.
Moore, fresh off her tour-de-force debut in Charles Band’s Parasite, offers a whole lot of nothing here. Okay, she was still a kid, but she’s not funny, she’s not particularly interesting and her character serves no significant purpose. But pity poor Michelle Johnson. Back in the day, this 18-year old was considered one of those “next big thing” things. So her agent sells her on the next logical step to stardom: Bare your breasts a lot, do that awful “fake boo-hoo” crying jag in every third scene, and (oh yeah) have sex with Michael Caine, who outdates her by 30 years and outweighs her by about 153 pounds.
The real twist of the knife is that this was the last theatrical feature by the legendary director Stanley Donen. Yes, that’s right; the cinematic genius that brought us such classic Hollywood movies as Singin’ in the Rain, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and Damn Yankees! has at this point in his career been relegated to taking pictures of old men leering at young breasts. The bottom line is that Blame It on Rio is a witless, brainless and classless sex romp that offers neither one iota of entertaining humour nor one remotely clever idea. That this film was even released on DVD (while other movies languish on the shelf) is a joke. Unfit for human consumption, no matter how feverish you may be.
