Rudo y Cursi
“The Host”, “Die Legende von Paul und Paula”, “Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis” and “Rudo y Cursi” have one major thing in common: They are all extremely funny movies, highly acclaimed in their own countries – and not exactly successful internationally. In the case of “Rudo y Cursi”, I would probably never have noticed it if I wouldn’t be such a Gael García Bernal fanboy and attempt to watch every single one of his movies.
And boy, I am glad that I watched this. Mostly a citizen of the Old World, I am a huge soccer fan, of course. If I recall correctly, there are more good anime about soccer than films with it; and I personally find it quite curious that such a nice soccer film happens to have come from Mexico of all places. There even is nobody dying in this movie! (That’s the most amazing thing about it.)
As it is with most funny films, it’s difficult to write about it. The weirdest thing of all of these is the fact that the confrontation of the brothers was not even a real confrontation, considering that they were aiming for the same thing! And managed to fail at it! Everything else was just filled with the most amusing jokes, especially when it comes to the brothers’ characters. Diego Luna’s character has such a delightfully bad personality, contributing the second most to the hilarity of the film (after the absolutely amazing lines by the off screen narrator – a soccer ball is like a woman indeed, hahahahaha).
Interestingly, I think I am slowly losing interest in Gael García Bernal, possibly because his roles are good but don’t make him stand out that much anymore. How sad!
Story-wise, I think that Carlos Cuarón did a much better job than in “Y tu mamá también” and for fans of the Mexican cinema, this film is an absolute delight. I am definitely going to watch the other films Cha Cha Cha Films are going to do (it’s only two so far anyways, “Mother and Child” and “Biutiful”).