Be Reel- The Linguini Incident

Richard Shepard’s The Linguini Incident released in 1991 is a laughably terrible movie, with some redeemable qualities.
The film stars David Bowie as Monte, a lying bartender whose green card is about to expire. If he fails to get married before the card expires he will be forced to return to England and killed (for reasons not explained in the movie). Monte works at a restaurant alongside Lucy (Rosanna Arquette), a waitress who studies Houdini and escape tricks in her spare time. Lucy claims to have some relation to Houdini but her skills are far from his. Monte and Lucy’s relationship begins to grow as the pair plan to rob the restaurant they work at. Monte needs money to pay off gambling debts, which ties into the climax of the film.
The pair successfully robs the restaurant, but fail to marry before Monte's green card expires. Monte also loses a bet with his two bosses and impulsively sets up another bet. He bets his bosses that Lucy can escape from a straight jacket inside of a locked canvas bag while she's submerged underwater in one of the restaurants fish tanks.  He lies to Lucy, telling her the bosses know about the robbery and will call the police if she doesn't do the trick. Obviously, Lucy agrees to do the trick. Through a twist of events, she finds out Monte is lying to her and pretends to die while doing her trick. This works as a test and allows Lucy to see how Monte actually feels about her. The movie ends with Monte and Lucy making plans for their first date.
You might think The Linguini Incident was written by robots considering how unrealistic the dialogue is. The costumes and sets are also very distracting, making it very hard to feel emersed in the movie. Every restaurant employee wears a reflective silver dress/shirt and all the women wear wigs (this is also not explained). The restaurant set is massive, bulky, and just doesn't look like a restaurant at all. One redeeming quality in the movie would be the characters. The characters surprisingly have personalities, even flaws. Monte is a liar, Lucy is unreliable, Lucy's friend Vivian (Eszter Balint) is very selfish. The characters also don't all exist just to support the main character. They have their own jobs, problems, and goals. For example, Vivian is a fashion designer and a subplot in the movie is about how the sales of her clothing have increased after being worn during the restaurant robbery. Lucy as a character is actually quite refreshing. She's the classic girl that's not like other girls because she's clumsy and weird but this works because she is. The movie shows how she's different with her Houdini obsession and shows us she clumsy through her failed escape tricks. The movie shows us who she is rather than just tell us.
As flawed as the movie is it has just as many strengths. For a light-hearted romantic comedy from the 90's, it's hard to get mad at. I would rate the movie as good-bad, for having surprisingly good characters, humor, but also because of it's iffy off-screen decisions and lack of memorability.

Heres the trailer, you can see the weird sets and costumes 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdYePArbF3o