200 Motels
by Frank Zappa, Charles Swenson
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VHS Tape Cover Information
Actor: Aynsley Dunbar, Dick Barber, George Duke, Jimmy Carl Black, Theodore BikelDirector: Charles Swenson, Frank Zappa
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Original Language), Analog
Format: Color, NTSC
Running Time: 100 minutes
Release Date: 1993-03-17
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Publisher: MGM (Video & DVD)
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
VHS Movie Reviews of 200 Motels
Movie Review: Cult Classic that preaches to the choir
Summary: 4 Stars
If you know nothing about this movie, there are a few facts you should be aware of before watching that help mitigate the usual hatred this movie elicits:
1) It had a budget of $700,000. Of that, $400,000 went directly to the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, so effectively this movie had a budget of $300,000.
2) It had a shooting schedule of five 8-hour days.
Given these two tourniquet-like limitations, it is amazing that Zappa got ANYTHING done, let alone this final product. A good companion piece to this film is "The True Story of 200 Motels" which documents these (and numerous other) obsticles Zappa encountered while making this beast. If Gail Zappa ever gets around to issuing a DVD of 200 Motels, hopefully she will be precient enough to include The Making OF as a bonus feature... but I digress.
Yes, this film is technically "bad," but it's so bad it's good, and it has much self-effacing humor within it about how bad it is. Admittedly, the movie doesn't have a plot per se: it is a collection of "road stories" designed to underscore the central theme that "touring can make you crazy." 200 Motels has a heavy dose of Dadaism, which admittedly I have never been a big fan of, but in this case it semems to work, as it lends well to the budget limitations and surreal feeling of the film. Likewise, much of the score is avante garde neo-classical, which I have never been into (if I want classical music, give me the baroque masters.)
If you are new to the Zappa universe, this probably is a bad place to start, as the film relies heavily on "inside jokes" and references to the previous corpus of Zappa/Mothers musical inventory -- what is known as his "Conceptual Continuity." I've got his entire catalogue so I GET the jokes, but friends I've shown this to who knew little to nothing about FZ merely scratched their heads with a perplexed look. Tellingly, though, they all admitted they *liked* it, even if they didn't *understand* it.
Obviously, this film is not for everyone, especially those prone to epilepsy (a joke/warning which is made early in the film!) or those who need a linear, well-defined plot. If you're willing to risk something "different," though, give it a try.
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