★★
“Banda on the run.”
It has been a while since I’ve scraped the bottom of the barrel of Mexploitation cinema: all those telenovelas don’t count, generally being well-produced and with reasonable production values. Just how reasonable is brought home by comparing them to this… Admittedly, I had to cope with it being entirely in Spanish with no subtitles. I kinda hoped that watching north of four hundred episodes of Hispanic TV would magically instill in me the ability to speak Spanish. Turns out, this is not the case. Who knew? But I think I am on fairly safe ground in declaring this a bargain basement comedy-action cross, which exists to provide PG-rated titillation as much as thrills or laughs.
I’m informed this is the second in a series, which has reached at least three entries (though only this one can be found in the IMDb), so there appears to be sufficient of a local market to justify its existence. It seems to start with the good girls – Los Bikinis Rosas, who do indeed wear pink bikinis – celebrating with their boss after another successful mission. But it’s not long before they are called into action again, going up against the bad-girl gang, the Cobras Negras, for possession of a microchip which… presumably can do something or other of importance. That bit was lost in translation (or lack thereof). No prizes for guessing what shade of bikinis are preferred by the Negras.
This colour co-ordination is probably a good thing, since the four women on each side are almost entirely interchangeable in appearance. The Rosas have a token blonde, while the Negras have a girl in glasses, who is presumably the evil nerd of the bunch or something. [I was basically making up my own plot there.] As appears semi-customary, a masked wrestler shows up, in this case the Rosas getting their training from Huracán Ramírez. Which is impressive, since he died seven years prior to this film’s 2013 release. This would not have fazed the Mexican audience. Luchadors, particularly the masked ones, tend to be near immortal, with characters being passed down the generations, sometimes as “el Hijo de” (the son of), or simply by taking over the mask, as appears the case here.
It’s not very interesting, and has horrible pacing. For example, the Negras seem to have their headquarters located in a basement below a food court at the back of a mall. So, we get to see them – apparently in real time – going through the mall… taking the elevator to the basement… and walking from there to the room in question. It’s a sequence even more gratuitously padded than the characters’ bras. The same goes for the lengthy aerobic exercise training sequence, during which the camera appears fixed, with dedication that’s border-line impressive, on the actresses’ chests and butts. The action is not great either, though is likely stellar in comparison to the stabs at comedy, which appear mostly to consist of a flamboyant homosexual.
Half a star of this is credit for my shortcomings in Spanish, which are likely responsible for some of the issues. While her translation skills may have been helpful, I just couldn’t bring myself to inflict this one on Chris, even though her derisive snorts would have been truly epic to behold.
Dir: Julio Aldama Jr.
Star: Julio Aldama Jr., America Ramírez, Julio Zaizar, Coco Rojo