Bandidas

Salma Hayek, Penelope Cruz

Dale Evans was able to pull it off. So did Barbara Stanwyck and Annie Oakley. Yet, for the most part the female western as a genre has come into this world stillborn. The last time Hollywood tried to get audiences interested in this vein of movies was in the mid-1990s with the release of Sharon Stone’s The Quick & the Dead (1995) and the campy Bad Girls (1994) starring hotties Madeleine Stowe, Mary Stuart Masterson, Andie MacDowell, and Drew Barrymore. Much like the comic book industry that cannot figure out why they cannot garner female readership while depicting women with chests so large that there are moons orbiting around them, Hollywood will again be at a lost to explain why women would not want to see a film with Salma Hayek and Penelope Cruz in tight corsets and tighter pants firing large pistols. It is girl power after all and what is more empowering to a girl than watching a couple of 30-something-year-old babes objectify themselves on the big screen. There is so much cheesecake on the screen that audiences are going to come out of this movie with diabetes. So, how do you get buzz going for a female comedy western that is not very funny? Lesbianism, that is right, the sisterhood of Sappho, a reverse Brokeback Mountain. If it worked for Brad and Angelina, causing a public stampede to see the marginal Mr. & Mrs. Smith, why not Salma and Penelope.

Salma Hayek and Penelope Cruz, who are best friends in real life, were at a photo-shoot/press conference in Mexico for the film, and for some unknown reason in front of the reporters and press, Cruz, while standing next to her friend, let her hand drop and coped a feel of the paradise known as Salma Hayek’s backside. The heavens opened up, a couple of blind kids regained their sight, dozens of witnesses crossed themselves, and a movie that was DOA at the box office suddenly became front page news across Latin America. When asked why she grabbed her best friend’s canned hams, Penelope explained that she was sick with the flu and grabbed on “to keep things moving.” Yeah, that makes sense, especially when you know all those guys with cameras are standing behind you. Penelope, who in her best acting job since dating Tom Cruise, then acted shocked that the pair would be fodder for the tabloids.

Just like when you see Christopher Walkens’ name in the credits of a film, you know there is going to be a long rambling speech by him, there are certain actors that you almost know the role they are going to play before the first reel is even shot. Dwight Yoakam – great singer, but typecast since Sling Blade as the bad guy or heavy. Steve Zahn – comic relief (Sahara, Daddy Day Care), a low rent Jack Black. Sam Shepard – the wise cowboy mentor. Now that you know the actors, lets play Bad Scriptwriter 101 and see if you can write this female version of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Okay, we got two hot Latinas, so of course one of them has to be named Maria. It is a wacky comedy, so one of them has to be rich and one has to be poor, so we can have that witty banter. Let’s make Salma’s Sara a rich girl educated in Europe because, you know, being educated in Europe means you’re rich. Penelope, well, she has to be poor and, in the grand cowboy tradition, has to talk to her horse, and of course, she is virginal because you got to have the sex talk, you know, that scene where the 39-year-old woman teaches the 34-year-old woman how to kiss a guy. You got to have that, along with a horse that can play tic-tac-toe. (I was hoping a monkey would show up at some point, but he didn’t.) So, how do bring these two cupcakes together? Try to kill their fathers. Never mind that their fathers would have kneeled over long ago wondering why their smoking offspring could not find a husband in the last 15 to 20 years. Enter stage right, Dwight Yoakam as the evil American Tyler Jackson who is building a railroad and wants the people’s land. I bet you can almost feel the mustache twirling from here. Shooting and poisoning people is just a fringe benefit. So what are 2 pieces of eye candy to do? Rob his bank, catfight, get wet, blow things up, get wet some more, and wear matching outfits. Sam Shepard turns up as an old outlaw, mentors the girls, and I am sure, wondered why he left beautiful Katherine Ross at home to do this glorified cameo. Wait, I know what you are thinking, you forgot about Steve Zahn. Well, how about he plays a goofy and bumbling New York Detective named Quentin that Jackson has to bring in to get the girls. Can you guess what happens? Very good, they will capture him, tie him to a bed, and he will realize they are pretty good eggs and join them. If you have ever seen a Zorro movie, you know where the film goes from there.

So is it a good movie? Hayek and Cruz could read the phone book in their underwear for 93 minutes and strangely, most boys with raging hormones will find it interesting for some unknown reason. It is pure de fluff, PG-13 fare not worth the space for a review. This movie is the cinematic equivalent of Maxim, Gear, FHM, or Stuff magazine, you know, those magazines where women are spread out like butter on a sandwich, posing in lingerie or other brief attire but no mommy parts, those magazines that are intended for the same results as porn, but the guy who buys them is trying to maintain the thinnest veil of respectability. In other words, Playboy for those guys whose mommies gave them a good dose of guilt as a child, modern JC Penny’s lingerie catalogues with several articles on what it takes to be hip and happening. “Oh look, I’m bending over.” “Oh look, I’m wet.” “We are two hot chicks wrestling.” Please, give me a break. The only reason I care is that I like Salma Hayek, loved her in Frida, In The Time Of The Butterflies, Desperado, and No One Writes to the Colonel. She is one of the few actresses in Hollywood that does not look like at 12-year-old boy in drag, and she is not getting any younger. She has got maybe 4 or 5 years left in the tank before she is guest starring as someone’s mom in a sitcom or letting a camera follow her around in some awful reality show that will hopefully somehow revive her career. If she had wanted to do a feminist western, there are so many great stories out there. She could have played Fox Hastings who ran away from home at 14 to become first and only female bulldogger in rodeo history in the 1920s. How about Lucille Mulhall for whom the term “cowgirl” was coined for when she took the East Coast by storm with her amazing feats on horseback at the turn of the 20th century? While Ethel Merman might always be Annie Oakley, there wouldn’t be a dry eye in the house watching a straight biopic on the shootist’s life especially when her husband Frank Butler in such grief over his wife’s death that he just stopped eating and died 10 days later. How about Civil War spy Major Pauline Cushman, the Bandit Queen Belle Starr, the cross-dressing Mollie Monroe, the lynched Cattle Kate, or even Calamity Jane?

“But Trevor, lesbians, lesbians?” Grow up, it is all sizzle and no steak. PT Barnum would be proud of this con job. Five little digits on a backside will equal at least eight digits in the box office total.

Verdict: Fluff