Hard Ticket to Hawaii

Those with acid tongues say Andy Sidaris’s filmography, or rather that of the entire Sidaris family, exhibits only diminishing returns. There is definitely some degree of truth to that statement based on the production values of his movies. His first two films were influenced by other producers and screenwriters, who enriched Sidaris’s centrefold visions with their contributions and thus improved them. But when this eternal prepubescent fantasist struck out on his own, he began to build his own universe, into which he gradually sank and he increasingly focused on its distribution at the expense of superficial attractions and exaggeration. Therefore, Hard Ticket to Hawaii, as the very first of his films linked by characters and setting, still abounds with more than a few viewer-gratifying elements and it is not undermined (in chronological viewing) by the triteness of the maestro’s trademarks. The peak of primitive genius lies in the stylisation of the movie’s world, which can best be characterised as impotent porn. Whereas plot, or rather events other than copulation, was pushed as far aside as possible in the porn of the time, Sidaris offers viewers another side of fairy tales for adults. His world is inhabited exclusively by Playmates and Penthouse Pets, shredded Adonises and cartoonish flunkeys (actually, it’s such an American-style gluttonous and hypertrophied live-action variation on the anime of the day, especially that of Reijo Matsumoto). Women never miss an opportunity to shower or change clothes, but when it comes to honeydrippers, everything remains modest from the waist down. The boudoir aesthetics of Playboy video compilations are combined with the style of tourism commercials, while properly exaggerated twists and burlesque pranks are injected into this surreal world. The protagonists’ clashes with the henchmen, with their unbridled excess and absence of proper choreography, can be compared to boys between the ages of six and ten playing army and the technical gadgets with which the agents and killers are equipped come across as cartoonish grotesques. Therefore, the insane subplot with a mutant snake infected with “toxins from cancer-plagued rats” doesn’t stand out from the rest of the film. Hard Ticket to Hawaii offers a deliberately overwrought and über-spasmodic spectacle that is concurrently guileless as well as healthily exaggerated. _____ In the context of the Sidaris MCU (Mammaries Cinematic Universe), we can refer to this movie as the introductory title of Phase 1, following the example of categorising Marvel movies. The three preceding feature-length films in Andy Sidaris’s directorial filmography comprise Phase 0, which is characterised by forming of the style and lack of links between the worlds of the individual films. Phase 1 is defined by the presence of the agent duo Donna and Taryn (played by Dona Speir and Hope Marie Carlton). Here, Sidaris himself very oddly tries to relate his own origins to the newly constructed world. In one scene, the characters admire posters for his previous films, mentioning that the main character of Malibu Express is their former fellow agent. It is not entirely appropriate to imagine the narratological causality of this apparent meta footnote, because it is as straightforwardly recombined as the rest of the fruits of Sidaris’s imagination. (16.01.2021) (minder) (meer)