"The Linguini Incident" is a bizarre, slightly cartoonish, rom-com-ish crime comedy set in New York City. Lucy (Rosanna Arquette) is a waitress with aspirations of becoming an escape artist. She's desperately in need of money to purchase Harry Houdini's wedding ring. Monte (David Bowie) is a charming but shady English bartender who needs to marry an American citizen to avoid deportation. Together with Lucy's friend, Vivian (Eszter Balint), they hatch a plan, if you can call it that, to rob the restaurant. Comedy ensues.
The visual style, sets and costumes are maximum 1990, which is to say peak 1980s. It's lacking in a period soundtrack, but otherwise the styling is comically exaggerated.
The script is funny, but raises a lot of questions. Way didn't they just do A? How did B know about C? Why did D have the E when it was supposed to be F? That sounds of thing... It's best not to think about it too much. The only real question is how does such an odd little indy type comedy have David Bowie in it? David Bowie actually paid for a chunk of this film through his production company. "The Linguine Incident" is apparently just Bowie being Bowie and trying different things.
This is the sort of film that didn't get much response on the theaters, but no doubt was rented a lot on VHS. It's deliberately fluff with offbeat humor, interesting characters, and a fun blend of crime, comedy, romance and Bowie. Apparently the self defense bra was never perfected.
Movies with rock stars... This seemed like a good choice to watch after Ned Kelly.
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