On 22 July 2022, my DVD movie watch was a decidedly 'out there' (but what had initially promised to be an at least ostensibly intriguing) Chilean road movie memorably entitled Crystal Fairy & The Magical Cactus (I told you it was 'out there'!).
Directed and written by Chilean director/actor/writer/painter/musician Sebastián Silva (who also plays minor character Lobo), and released in 2014 by IFB Films, Crystal Fairy & The Magical Cactus is (allegedly!) a comedy, all about a young Chile-visiting American named Jamie (played by Michael Cera, visually recalling a young Gene Wilder) and his fervent desire to track down a specimen of the famous San Pedro cactus Echinopsis pachanoi, a tall columnar species from which he can then extract the hallucinogenic substance mescaline and experience its well-documented psychotropic effects.
These are said to take the imbiber to a higher plane of consciousness and open, as Aldous Huxley famously entitled his autobiography, the doors of perception (and from which in turn Jim Morrison's 60s rock group The Doors took their name).
Anyway, Jamie is accompanied on his trek by three Chilean brothers – Champa, Lei, and Pilo (see later for the actors' names) – who, to varying degrees, wish to experience some mescaline moments too. Also joining them, after having been rashly invited to do so by Jamie during a drug-addled party the night before their trek begins, is a New Age-besotted young woman (played by Gaby Hoffmann) who calls herself Crystal Fairy and soon drives the four guys to distraction with her bizarre beliefs and behaviour.
Equally frustrating is that specimens of the required cactus are spotted growing in several locals' gardens during their search, but none of the owners will sell to Jamie and company even a small portion of one. So finally, in desperation, Jamie resorts to a spot of covert misappropriation (ok, theft!) in order to achieve their goal. Victorious at last, they travel on with their much-prized, purloined cactus portion until they reach a lonely desert beach, where they plan to make not only camp but also some long-awaited mescaline-infused magic brew.
Assuming that we would be entering classic Carlos Castaneda territory but expressed visually rather than verbally, I was now looking forward to all manner of colourful animated on-screen portrayals of their psychedelic hallucinations – an eye-blistering fusion of styles forgathered from the likes of Fantasia, Yellow Submarine, Allegro Non Troppo, and Fritz the Cat would have worked very well indeed here, I feel.
But no, nothing at all – just a few moans from Jamie about his voice sounding strange, and feeling hot'n'dizzy. End of. What a swizz, not to mention a major lost opportunity to bring some much-needed, long-remembered flamboyance and flair to this very middling muddy movie!
Instead, under the influence of their drugged concoction the five travelling companions in a very low-key manner simply begin to open up to one another, accepting their differences and putting them aside in favour of a modicum of friendship. And that's it – roll the credits! Had the movie actually built up to any kind of climax beforehand, I'd say that its ending was by comparison a definite anti-climax, but it didn't, so I shan't. Despite being referred to as "hilarious" in some reviews and accounts that I have read, laughs were few and far between as far as I was concerned, and tended to be of the embarrassing, cringe-worthy type rather than the genuinely funny kind. Each to their own, no doubt.
Turning to the characters themselves: I do have a lot of time for New Age ideology, but Crystal Fairy proved just as exasperating to me as she did to her companions (apparently she was actually based upon a real person, known to the director, which is a scary thought!). True, once her mind is loosened (even more than it already was!) by the effects of mescaline, she reveals a tragic, traumatic past that may explain her extreme eccentricities, but this revelation occurs far too late in the movie to ameliorate or cancel from the viewer's memory all of her earlier inanities. Equally, Jamie came across as a thoroughly unpleasant, priggish obsessive, boorish and bad-mannered in the extreme, whom I found impossible to like or even empathize with.
As for the trio of brothers: for the most part they exhibited zero screen charisma, and shared neither fraternal camaraderie nor even much in the way of physical appearance. Yet, ironically, the actors playing them are brothers in real life – Juan Andrés Silva as Champa, José Miguel Silva as Lei, and Agustin Silva as Pilo (not sure if they're related to the director, another Silva). One brother was tall, dark and handsome, one was tall and handsome, and one was tall – that's all.
My overall verdict on Crystal Fairy & The Magical Cactus? I'm aware that some film fans absolutely adore this movie, and that its director even won an award for it – but for me, that's 99 minutes of my life and 50p of my money (the price I paid for this movie's DVD) that I'll never get back! Where's Don Juan when you need him, that's what I say!!
Having said that, however, you may think differently, so if you'd care to take a brief trip by proxy with Crystal Fairy and co, please click here to view an official trailer for this magical(?) mescaline tour.
To view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.
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