Cyndi Lauper is one of the most iconic stars of 1980s pop music. Like so many musicians to reach that lofty status, she tried to expand her stardom to silver screen. The result of that experiment was Vibes, 1988 adventure comedy directed by Ken Kwapis. In the film Lauper plays Sylvia Pickel, a medium who has befriended spiritual guide named “Louise”. In the institute for studying paranormal phenomena she meets Nick Deezy (played by Jeff Goldblum), museum custodian with the gift of psychometry, i.e. ability to learn past events after touching certain objects. Two of them get recruited by Harry Buscafusco (played by Peter Falk), an old man who offers them $50,000 if they are willing to travel to Ecuador and help find his lost son. They agree, but when they arrive, it turns out that Harry actually wanted them to discover what he describes as “lost city of gold”. Their quest get complicated when they become target of gang of assassins.
Lauper gained her fame not only through musical talents, but also for her distinctive taste in clothing, makeup as well as carefully built image of free-thinking, slightly punkish and eccentric young woman. As such, she seemed perfect for the star of what was supposed to be quirky comedy about dysfunctional psychics. The plan worked, to certain point, in first 15 minutes or so when Vibes introduced her, Nick and other psychics torn between necessity to use and exploit their ability and desire to live normal lives. Unfortunately, script by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel discards psychic comedy for the sake of more conventional adventure story obviously inspired by Romancing the Stone and Indiana Jones films. Vibes represented feature debut for director Ken Kwapis, until that time known only for his work on television. His lack of proper experience reveals itself in inability to put authentic Ecuadorian locations to good use and the film looks cheaper than it actually. Even more problematic is bad dialogue, poorly written villains (played by mostly disinterested Googy Gress and Julian Sands) and lack of humour, which is too many times drowned by surprisingly large amounts of brutal violence, rather inappropriate of what was supposed to be light-hearted comedy. The cast does what it can, but Lauper and Goldblum simply lack proper chemistry. Vibes, unsurprisingly, turned into massive flop at the box office and critics weren’t any kinder. Roger Ebert in his review predicted that nobody would remember it and the next decades proved him right.
RATING: 2/10 (-)
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