200 Motels (1971)

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

I'm giving this a "9" not because it's a great, well-crafted, well- scripted movie, like I think most people would agree "Chinatown" or "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" is. I think it deserves a 9 because it's just an unfiltered extension of Frank Zappa's music, which I love already: weird, unique, often rambling, with astonishing gems here and there. "Mystery Roach" and "Magic Fingers" stand out as favorites. But Zappa was better at music than he was at filmmaking. 200 Motels is an annoyingly opaque in-joke, a surreal jumble of skits with psychedelic video filters, weird-looking people in funny costumes, and cheap sets. They're not really funny or interesting, either, they're just weird. It pulls off a lighthearted vibe like Sesame Street, only the characters talk about the "penis dimension," how depressing it is for whores to sleep with traveling musicians, and people taking too much acid. That may sound dark, even offensive, but the tone of 200 Motels is just so silly that it's hard to take any of it seriously.I think there are deeper meanings woven into this thing, but they're odd, half-baked and just not interesting. For instance, there's a recurring theme of nuns doing dirty and undignified things like having sex with Alladin's Lamp (wtf?) and taking pills. I would actually rather NOT take that seriously because even though it comes from the mind of the great Frank Zappa, it's... stupid. Juvenile. Hurrr you don't like religion, let's flick a booger on a nun. Without going deeper into why he wants to depict nuns in such an undignified way, it's just more tacky and nonsensical stage-dressing.It's kind of like the Monkees' "Head". It's stupid, pointless, and self- indulgent, but it's also a feature-length music video for a popular band, if you're into them anyways. And the over-the-top psychedelia is interesting at times.

Personally, I am a big Zappa fan. I read that this movie wasn't edited the way Zappa wanted and it turned out to be an entirely different movie, which I can see. It did feel incomplete and a gapped, but I still liked it. As a Zappa fan, I look deep for metaphors of philosophy in jokes and actions. I found many that were very deep to me, especially in the cartoon scene where the boy looks to the television for answers to life's questions and when Ringo Starr (playing Zappa) narrates the actions of the Mothers Of Invention. All in all, for a fan, it was entertaining and I would probably watch it again. In a non-fan's point of view, it's not at all conventional. I expected the way it was with a fan's point of view, but switching into a non-fan's point of view, it was confusing, bizarre, and random. It was perverted and deranged - far too crappy for the so-called Golden Age Of American Cinema (1970's). Even in that perspective, I felt the movie was innovative and twisted. Not bad, but extremely intriguing with an odd feeling I couldn't spot. This movie is not for everyone, but I liked it and any Zappa fan should too.

After years of reading about this movie, I finally saw 200 Motels on Netflix Streaming. Conceived by Frank Zappa, this is perhaps one of the baddest trips I've taken watching weird movies from the late '60s/early '70s. I mean, Zappa only appears during the musical numbers which happen to be the best parts of this film. There's also Ringo Starr playing an actor playing Zappa, Keith Moon as the "hot nun", and Theodore Bikel as the devil. Oh, and Flo and Eddie, formerly of The Turtles, are among the members of Frank's Mothers of Invention and they get the deserved most screen time of the group. The people I mentioned have their charms (well, maybe not Moon whose characterization I really don't understand) but the whole thing is just soooo incomprehensible to the point that I kept pausing the film to see how much time was left. But it's really worth seeing at least once if you want to get it out of your system. So on that note, 200 Motels gets a fair warning from me of what you should expect if you dare...

I stumbled across a pay-per-view showing of "200 Motels" a couple of months ago (for some reason my TV picks up other peoples' in-demand movie signals). I've never seen anything even remotely like this movie. The visuals, the music and sound effects, the plot line: in a sense that no other movie could achieve, Zappa (a non-drug user by all accounts) somehow managed to create the perfect simulation of the most bizarre kind of LSD experience. Movies like "The Trip" may scratch the surface, but "200 Motels" plunges us in headfirst. I'm not sure that this movie would make anyone want to try hallucinogenic drugs, but for anyone who likes their movies to take them outside the box, this is a must-see.