Post Description

No self-proclaimed surrealistic documentary can be all bad when it has a score composed by Frank Zappa, the Orson Welles of the rock music world, played by Zappa's Mothers of Invention and the Royal Philharmonic, as well as some extraordinarily clever visual effects, achieved by the use of videotape, and a title like "200 Motels."

The title is, perhaps, the best thing about the film that opened yesterday at the Plaza Theater. It cheerily evokes the image of groupies, warm beer, cheeseburgers, overflowing ash trays, efficient plumbing and inefficient air-conditioning, which freezes the air without cleaning it, in an endless chain of identical bed-sitters that are the homes-away-from-home for the members of a touring rock group.

"200 Motels" is not all bad, but because it's a movie with so many things going on simultaneously, it becomes too quickly exhausting—in actual effect, soporific.

At its heart, "200 Motets" is a subjective "A Hard Day's Night" in desperate need of the early Beatles. It is Zappa's somewhat put-on, but mostly put-down, vision of what it's like to be Frank Zappa (played by Ringo Starr) and the Mothers of Invention while touring through a universe that is one big Centerville, U.S.A. ("a real nice place to raise your kids up"). It is a place of dim-witted slogans, loneliness and aggressive girls with nicotine-stained fingers.

There are terrible sight gags, a very funny cartoon sequence ("Dental Hygiene Dilemma") in which a bored, motel-bound musician is reduced (if I remember correctly) to smoking a stolen towel, an outrageous oratorio dedicated to all those men and women who don't measure up (in one way or another), bits and pieces of choreography, references to Stanley Kubrick's "2001," and at least several dozen potentially funny ideas that are never developed, since the movie has the attention span of a speed freak.

The nonstop visual effects are initially stunning, as when the black-and-white zebra stripes on a floor seem to break loose and wrap themselves around a body, when a blob of blue dances around the frame of the film, finally attaching itself to someone's nose, and when a conventionally photographed face dissolves into a kind of line-drawing of the same face. I have no idea how these things are done but they are quite marvelous.

However, they are also immensely distracting in case you have any interest in the score. The music, which includes some of the most ambitious material ever written by Zappa, tends to go into one head and out the other, as if in flight from the almost predatory optical tricks.

Being easily intimidated myself, I found it impossible to respond to or even to identify the various Mothers, who move in and out of the movie like pale blobs of color, or to Ringo Starr, who is easily recognizable but always slightly ill-at-ease. Theodore Bikel also is recognizable—and ridiculous—as a kind of Lucifer figure who wanders across the screen dispensing hamburgers from a fuming briefcase.

Like a light show, "200 Motels" has no particular focal point, being principally an anthology of poor jokes and spectacular audio-visual effects, a few of which might expand the mind, but all of which, taken together, are like an overdose of Novocain.


The Cast
200 MOTELS, directed by Frank Zappa (characterizations) and Tony Palmer (visuals); story and screenplay by Mr. Zappa; music, Mr. Zappa; animation, Chuck Swenson; produced by Jerry Good and Herb Cohen; a Murakami Wolf/Bizarre Production distributed by United Artists. Running time: 99 minutes. At the Plaza Theater, 58th Street east of Madlson Avenue. (The Motion Picture Association of America's Production Code and Rating Administration has classified this film "R—restricted, persons under 17 not admitted without a parent or adult guardian.")
Rance Muhammitz . . . . . Theodore Bikel
Larry the Dwarf . . . . . Ringo Starr
The Hot Nun . . . . . Keith Moon
Lonesome Cowboy Burt . . . . . Jimmy Carl Black
Jeff . . . . . Martin Lickert
The Groupies . . . . . Janet Farguson, Lucy Offerall
Themselves . . . . . Don Preston, Motorhead Sherwood, Mark Volman, Howard Kaylan, lan Underwood, Aynsley, George Duke, Jim Pons, Frank Zappa