Bolero [1984] (REGION 1) (NTSC)

Graham...


Bo Derek continues her countdown from "10" to this low point   November 9, 2003
Lawrance M. Bernabo (The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota)
9 out of 10 found this review helpful

If you have ever seen the movie "10" and not just watched the trailer with the infamous seen of Bo Derek running down the beach with her cornrows bobbing along, then you know that Dudley Moore's fantasy of the perfect woman pops pretty much about the time that Bo's character opens her mouth. That fact pretty much serves as the model for Bo Derek's film career in the early days; she looked great but once she opened her mouth she started losing points. This was amply proven in "Tarzan, the Ape Man," but in case anybody missed the point we have the 1984 film, "Bolero." The film was subtitled "An Adventure in Ecstasy" in an effort to make everyone forget the other part of the title was a take off both on Derek's first name and the music by Ravel revitalized by "10" (fortunately the Olympic Ice Dancing champions Torvill and Dean gave us a much better association).

In "Bolero," Bo plays Lida MacGillivery, a little rich girl graduating from an English boarding school. Her graduation present is going to be the loss of her virginity, so she and her best friend, Catalina (Ana Obregón), go off to the deserts of Arabia, accompanied by her chauffer/bodyguard Cotton (George Kennedy). On the desert sands she meets a sexy sheik (Greg Bensen), who has his chance, but blows it despite all the Valentino references. When Lida has similar problems with a bullfighter in Spain named Angel (Andrea Occhipinti), we get the idea that this girl is going to have to go around the world, so to speak, to get her happy ending. Consequently, "Bolero" is a soft porn flick without the sex. Just think about that for a while and then it should be very clear to you why this is a bomb of major proportions that falls into the "so bad you have to see it to believe it" category instead of the "so bad it is good" column. Maybe director John Derek did this as a way of telling the adolescent males of the world to stop fantazigng about his wife (actually, Olivia d'Abo as Paloma is the sexiest woman in the film).

Today Bo Derek appears on "Seventh Heaven" and she does a nice job of acting while fully dressed (plus I think she is, oh, let's say, 10 times better looking today at 44 than she was at the age of 28). There is redemption in Hollywood and it is good to know that her time in Purgatory for "Bolero" is a thing of the past.