MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE (1985)

A young man, Omar (Gordon Warnecke), lives in London with his depressed father. His father is so bummed out that he just sits in bed all day and drinks. Omar is offered a job by his uncle in his uncle’s parking garage. Soon he is promoted to driving around drug trafficker Salim. One evening, while Omar is driving Salim around, the car is approached by a small group of goofballs. While the dorks are literally licking the car’s windows, Omar looks over to the side of the road and there is sexy badboi Johnny (Daniel Day-Lewis) leaning up against a light pole. They used to be schoolboy chums and begin talking again. Eventually other family stuff happens and Omar is given a broken down laundromat to run. He hires Johnny to help.

MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE is a watchable film (and I’m sure back in the mid-1980’s it was a fresher idea), but overall, it left me flat. Maybe if I knew more about Thatcher-era London I would have enjoyed it more but based on the Criterion Collection disc cover and the various things I’d heard about the film over the years, I was expecting the romantic relationship between Omar and Johnny to be the main focus of the film. Instead, to me, it felt like Omar’s family was the main focus, the tension between the street punks and well, everybody to be second and finally, Omar and Johnny’s relationship third. Also, I didn’t get any sexual chemistry between the two main actors.

Solid acting, a television set behind a sofa, meddling pace, unimpressive sets and locations that kinda gave off a made-for-TV vibe, too small of a cast, multiple scenes out on the street but without any feel of it being a real street with random citizens walking around, multiple unsympathetic characters (including our two heroes, I especially felt bad for the little girl they terrorized while they were stealing her family's electronics), 1980's fashions, a SOME LIKE IT HOT poster, another poster for a movie that looks like it is called LAILA (which there is a movie from 1984 with that name), a very odd placement of a traffic light, a character with a face tattoo (not sure what the historic timeline is on cinematic face tattoos, although we all know that King Vidiot had one in 1983), non-threatening street punks, a woman in jeans and a purple shirt playing a video arcade machine but then when a fight breaks out it's a different woman in jeans and a purple shirt, a weird water(?) sound effect that was annoying, a "turf accountant" which I had to Google. It's the same as a betting hall, like for horse races. Also, how was Salim so naive as to not expect some kind of reprisal for what he did to the punks foot?

MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE is historically interesting and I’m glad it was made (and I'm glad I watched it), but the entire thing felt undercooked to me. I would like to see a remake.

BLOODY MISTAKE III (2009)

This will probably be the shittiest “review” (or whatever it is I do on here) on Happyotter, but there’s really nothing that I can say about this film without giving something away. It is just packed to the brim (even the very first scene) with awesome story revelations. The movie is only 67 minutes long but I was rewinding it and yelling so much that it probably took me over three hour to watch the whole thing. There’s so much going on in this movie, that I rewatched some of it today and even started drawing a diagram to figure out the story! It’s fucking awesome!

I doubt anybody who’s involved with this film will ever see this, but if you do: Thank you. I really mean it. I had so much fun watching this series that I’ve been smiling all week. And I’m already handsome as fuck so now I’m just that much more handsomeomererier or something with this big goofy grin on my mug.

Fuck me, that scene with Ken’s mom was one of the greatest moments in movie history. I was over here yelling “Ohhhhhhh!” like Andrew Dice Clay back in 1990.

Fuck it, if you love awesome movies, then you need to check out this entire series. And if anybody has anything else like this, then for the love of Satan please mail me that shit. My PO Box is listed somewhere around here.

Part 1 - Bloody Mistake (2009)
Part 2 - Bloody Mistake II (2009)