2.5 stars out of 5
Thanks for ruining my birthday, Will Ferrell. Tuesday was my birthday, and on Tuesdays I can see movies for free at Clearview Cinemas, thanks to my Optimum Rewards card. Ah, but there was nothing of interest at my favorite Clearviews this Tuesday, so… I spent SEVEN DOLLARS for a matinee showing at a different theater chain. Hey, why not, treat myself! It was my freaking birthday.
And I had really been looking forward to Casa de mi Padre. I thought, this is the kind of movie other people won’t like but I’ll like a whole lot. You know, like Cabin Boy. I saw Will Ferrell interviewed. I read a lengthy article about the movie. Will Ferrell does what he likes to do, damn the corporate pressures! This could be a gamechanger for Mexican-produced films. But it had such a small budget and was having a small release. It would have to do well to expand into more theaters! Oh how I was rooting for this little movie.
You forgot one thing, Ferrell. You forgot to make a movie that didn’t suck.
Now, I totally admire the guts it took to do a movie in Spanish with English subtitles. (Though immediate points off for having a voice at the beginning tell us, in English, that the movie is in Spanish. Trust your audience much, Mr. Ferrell?) Ferrell pulls it off, playing it generally straight, though yet again as an overgrown dumb guy (which is wearing a little thin by now). He’s working hard, he’s wearing funny outfits, he’s singing, he’s trying to entertain us and I appreciate it. But I’d been led to believe that the laughs would come from the fact that there weren’t laughs—that they were playing everything straight. Not the case. There is lame, sophomoric humor throughout. This is not a cleverly written film. I looked up Andrew Steele—one of Ferrell’s Funny or Die buddies. His only previous screenplay was The Ladies’ Man. Not a great moment in SNL film history.
And the movie is supposedly an homage to a bygone era in Mexican films. Except, it’s not cleverly directed. Guess what? This is Matt Piedmont’s movie-directing debut. And you know where he’s done a lot of previous work? Funny or Die Presents. Which is famously hit-or-miss. So things that are supposed to look like spoofs of low-budget sets and choppy editing instead just come across as cheap and careless.
The talented Gael García Bernal is on hand, but with so little to do, I could only concentrate on his resemblance to a young Pauly Shore. Nick “Ron Swanson” Offerman shows up and is not funny.
This week it was announced that an Anchorman sequel is finally in the works. But Will Ferrell announced it on Conan, so maybe he doesn’t want anyone to see that either.
Jack Silbert, curator