|
Towards the end of Candy, Marlon Brando playing a faux-Hindu guru,
explains to the pseudonymous heroine, a nubile and vapid young
thing (played all too convincingly by Ewa Aulin), that her name
embodies the sublime unity of the universe – with its “C”
representing the Eagle Claw, or divine male principle, and “Y”
representing the Yonni, its correspondingly divine female
principle. Which pretty much sums up the plot of this adaptation
of Terry Southern's adaptation of Candide: a bunch of big name
Hollywood males go from scene to scene having their way with (nay
damn near sexually assaulting) Aulin's foxy young naif. And the
results are embarrassingly bad. Expressed differently, and with
the accent on the “Y”, Brando's speech rings as a great
big metaphysical question: as in WHY??? Why did Marlon Brando,
Richard Burton, Ringo Starr, Sugar Ray Leonard (uh huh), and (holy
shit!) John Huston get themselves involved in this absolute
stinker of a movie – this movie which is meant to be an
outrageous satire of the sixties counterculture's obsession with
the guru figure but is so ineptly handled from moment one that it
doesn't even succeed as camp; this movie which ends up being
Richard Simmons ridiculous – WHY?????????????????
|
