BARCELONA

BARCELONA (Directed by Whit Stillman. Starring Taylor Nichols, Chris Eigeman, Tushka Bergen, Mira Sorvino)

Whit Stillman’s debut Metropolitan was a witty low-budget New York comedy that led to (inevitable) comparisons with Woody Allen. His follow up may lead to another Woody Allen comparison - the observation that we preferred his earlier, funny ones. Or in Stillman’s case, one, singular.

For although Barcelona is full of one liners, it is not exactly a bundle of laughs. It follows the misadventures of two Americans in Spain in the late eighties, when anti-American feeling is on the rise. Ted (Taylor Nichols) is an uptight young businessman trying to fit into the local community but saddled with his abrasive cousin Fred (Chris Eigman) a navy lieutenant only intent on fitting into some of the local girls.

The two actors shined in minor roles in Metropolitan, but are too unsympathetic to hold the centre of Stillman’s ungainly story. The plot simply wanders all over the place, as if it had been arbitarily hacked down from a larger source, with crucial information turning up too late to have an effect (Fred’s sudden last minute plot developing declaration that he loves Ted’s girlfriend, never even hinted at for over an hour and a half of screen time) or not being supplied at all (who are all those characters in the last reel?) Veering uneasily between dry comedy and overdone melodrama via elliptical plot turns, Barcelona is one of the least well constructed films I have ever encountered.

Nicely shot and peppered with thoughtful dialogue and clever images, its problems lie seem to lie with a director too enamoured of his own, apparently partially autobiographical, script. Stillman remains a promising film-maker, but on this evidence he had better hurry back to his native New York.

RATING: HH

HIGHLANDER III: THE SORCERER (Directed by Andy Morahan. Starring Christopher Lambert, Mario Van Peebles, Deborah Unger)

“There can only be one!” is the oft repeated catchphrase of the Highlander series, so God knows how we got as far as a third instalment. Highlander II: The Quickening was a genuinely dreadful sequel. This, at least, captures some of the ludicrous romantic sword and sorcery flavour of the original. Christopher Lambert returns as the immortal Scotsman with a French accent, but his usual co-star Sean Connery (the immortal Egyptian with a Scottish accent) has evidently decided that no amount of money would be worth coming back from the dead again. Well, one reincarnation is probably enough for anybody. What the producers saved on his fee they appear to have spent on locations and special effects, leading to some quite enjoyable battle scenes as the film leaps between Japan, America, Africa, France and the Highlands, where Conor Macloud ov ze clan Macloud does battle with Mario Van Peebles of the rent-a-villain agency. As they say in Scotland, you take the highlands and I’ll just stay at home and see if there’s something good on the telly. Or something like that.