Blame it on Rio

[StevePulaski]

Blame it on Rio (1984)
Directed by: Stanley Donen

Michelle Johnson and Michael Caine in Blame it on Rio.

Rating: ★★

I'm not going to pretend Blame it on Rio isn't problematic when it certainly is. Its premise is a juvenile one, targeted to dirty-minded men who never got out of the college-aged fantasy of sleeping with a girl who is barely old enough to vote. It's the perfect movie to teach a lesson about positioning a premise with under and overtones that are troubling and need a special angle or theme in order to function effectively. A good comparison would be contrasting the differences in tone and focus in Woody Allen's Manhattan and this particular film. One concerns an older man's relationship with a high school girl as one where an age-gap helps and hinders feelings of love and emotional connection all while helping two lost and confused souls by knowing they have one another. The other simply relishes in barely legal boobs and the taboo of it all.

Blame it on Rio is a film from the Golden Age of Porn that's missing all its sex scenes. Evidently, they were replaced with exposition in the form of small talk amongst its actors that is about as interesting as the conversations in actual pornographic movies. The film focuses on two middle-aged men who decide to take a trip to Rio de Janeiro to clear their heads. Matthew (Michael Caine) was supposed to bring his wife Karen (Valerie Harper), but marital troubles cloud the thought of taking any kind of vacation together. The same can be said for his pal Victor (Joseph Bologna), who is going through a divorce himself with his 17-year-old daughter Jennifer (Michelle Johnson) caught in the middle of it. Matthew decides to go anyway, taking along his teen daughter Nikki (Demi Moore in one of her earliest performances), while Victor brings Jennifer to their resort to let loose for a few days in the land of lust, weddings, and booze.

The three details of Rio wind up grabbing a hold of Jennifer, who begins to make romantic passes at Matthew, who she affectionately refers to as "Uncle Matthew." She becomes increasingly friendly with him, eventually confessing her lust for him when the two bump into one another at a beach party, surrounded by a barrage of topless women, including Jennifer herself. Although Matthew initially resists, he caves in long enough for the two to make love on the beach. The next day, Matthew is imperative in his demand that something like this can never happen again, but Jennifer, not one to give up easy, continues her streak of inappropriate come-ons and situations all under her father's nose. Nikki observes her friend's behavior from a distance, shying away while harboring intense anger for her father and his disintegrating relationship with her mother compounded by a newfound one with a woman a third of his age.

In a sea of ill-fated humor, bad laughs, and uncomfortable sex scenes played solely for skin, Michael Caine emerges as the film's most consistently amusing actor. At the risk of being redundant, he recalls Woody Allen's Alvy Singer character in Annie Hall not only in appearance, but in presence, as he frequently engages in fourth-wall-breaking monologues that detail his character's motivations with added hindsight. He plays up the same kind of nervous convention that Allen does so effortlessly, even when he's part of the problem despite continuing to lament his role as the victim. If there's anyone that can play a character being dragged around by a much-younger woman, while still at the mercy of his current wife and the temper of his best friend, it's Caine, and he shows why we wouldn't have him any other way.

Joseph Bologna, on the other hand, provides a contrast that reminded me of the character dynamics in Weekend at Bernie's, and that's pretty good. In that film, Andrew McCarthy plays straight-laced but jittery as opposed to his more lax, carefree partner played by Jonathan Silverman. Bologna adopts the loose-cannon role akin to Silverman with a temper. He's fun until he starts to really lose it upon the realization that a man far older than his daughter is sleeping with her on a recurring basis. Meanwhile, Johnson's role, as thankless as it is rendering her simply an object to look beautiful and not feel anything deeper than intense lust, does still merit some comedic charm even if her Lolita-esque character can sometimes provoke the opposite.

Blame it on Rio is such a male-centric movie, right down to its title that abides by the age-old idea that it's never one person's fault, but rather, a climate or a particular place, like Vegas or, in this case, Rio de Janeiro. The laughs it gets are slight, and the overall, uncritical aura of the central relationship is a relic of the past in the regard that you could never release a movie like this today and have it be as low-key and inconsequential as this one. The film was directed by Stanley Donen, serving as his last theatrical effort before his retirement from films. What could've motivated Donen - who directed Singin' in the Rain, On the Town, and numerous other films amongst a handful of standards in American cinema - to direct a film like this? Did he get tired of focusing intimately on the wholesome?

Starring: Michael Caine, Joseph Bologna, Michelle Johnson, and Demi Moore. Directed by: Stanley Donen.