Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Review: Casa De Mi Padre

I watch American Netflix, so this title may not be available to all of you, however, if you can get your hands on it, watch it! Last night Bob and I were scrolling through the movies looking for something good. Some Mexican cowboy looking picture comes up and it's a Will Ferrel movie called Casa De Mi Padre. Bob looked eager to check it out and I agreed. Don't worry, no spoilers!

The movie is set in present day Mexico. Will Ferrel is a ranchero named Armando Alvarez and lives a humble life with his father, though their relationship is strained. They're falling on hard times and his father is very worried. One day his rich, hot shot brother, Raul, returns to Mexico from the US to save the family farm and to introduce his family to his super hot fiance, Sonia. Amando is suspicious of his brother's fiance and doesn't trust her motives. He thinks she's just after his brother's money. As it turns out, Raul is really a drug lord and is at war with another more powerful drug lord who is after turf and Sonia.

Will Ferrel produced this movie and I feel like everything he touches is gold. He's a genius. I think his acting is incredible and he's a lot funnier than most people give him credit for. At first I thought this movie was going to be some sort of Nacho Libre type film where everyone speaks English in horrible Spanish accents, but that was not the case. For this movie Ferrel spent a month working with a dialect coach learning Spanish. The entire is movie is in Spanish with subtitles. They're not good subtitles either. Everything's worded just a little bit off as though they directly translated the Spanish to English and it's rather amusing.

The greatest thing about this movie is the production value. There isn't any. The sets are laughable and poorly painted. They use obvious mannequins and dummies as well as really terrible animatronics. A lot of people get shot in this movie and the gore is exaggerated to the point of hilarity. There are tons of "goofs" where scenes don't cut right together and the continuity is disrupted.

Everyone's acting is spot on without going over board. There's all these little character quirks and subtleties that make me want to watch this movie over again just to make sure I didn't miss any the first time around since I was mostly staring at the subtitles. Everything about this movie was deliberately delightful without it being too Tommy Wiseau.

Some reviewers felt the movie was too long and tried to do too much. I disagree completely. I got sucked into this movie big time and I think this was one of Will Ferrel's best movies. He has a lot of great movies, so it's hard to rank it exactly, but it's up there. One of my favourite movies of all time is Napolean Dynamite, so hopefully that gives you a reference as to what sort of move this is.

Easily 4.5 out of 5 stars.

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