MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Shrimp on the Barbie’ Serves Up Marin

Cheech Marin is so funny that you find yourself laughing at him in “The Shrimp on the Barbie” (citywide) even though the picture itself is wildly uneven. He plays Carlos Munoz, an L.A. Chicano down on his luck who decides to give Australia a whirl. After several false starts--including a nightclub stint as Elvo, the Original Pakistani Elvis Impersonator--he winds up agreeing to pretend to be a rich girl’s fiance in return for the $5,000 needed to save another of his ventures, a partnership in a Mexican restaurant in Sydney. The idea is that he’s to act so lowdown and obnoxious that the girl’s father will give his blessings to the lunkhead she really wants to marry.

You don’t need a crystal ball to know that Carlos and the heiress (Emma Samms) are going to end up together for real. But the getting there is needlessly bumpy. Marin’s hilarious, outrageous put-on towers over the rest of the shenanigans, which for the most part come off as awkward and crude. In essence this is a ‘30s-style screwball comedy--a genre that is forever tempting filmmakers to emulate, but is devilishly hard to pull off in the ‘90s. Actually, writers Grant Morris, Ron House and Alan Shearman have some good ideas and a sense of social satire, but it takes a truly gifted director to pull it all off. Whoever made the attempt took his or her name off the picture. Instead, the nonexistent “Alan Smithee,” a phony name that’s been hauled out in such circumstances for decades, gets the credit.

It’s too bad that Marin didn’t get to direct the film, for the gifts he displayed as a director (and writer) in “Born in East L.A.” are just the ones needed here.

In any case, in both serious and comic moments Marin is a consistent delight. Samms is game as the spoiled rich girl who finally sees the light, and Vernon Wells is quite funny as the smug, beefy cad Samms thinks she loves.