I guess this is why high school recommends students to take at least two years of a foreign language. It looks good on any college resume and it may provide the building blocks for a satirical film in your later years. Hey, you never know. Casa De Mi Padre is a film Will Ferrell has most likely wanted to do for quite sometime, but the lack of mainstream interest has probably held him back. He rounds up his friends, some of them from the website "Funny or Die," and gives made-for-TV films that would usually air on the Puerto Rican channel, Telemundo a run for their money.
This is a parody of the telenovela style where locations are limited and usually reduced to clearly fake backdrops, animals are incredibly artificial, and the corniness and melodrama in the story is hammed up to unknown levels. The attention to detail and creativity levels that are next-to necessary to make a parody film of this style work are present, but everything else is ostensibly on autopilot.
Will Ferrell is Armando Álvarez, a man who has nothing but the utmost devotion to his father's ranch and their business. His brother, Raúl (Diego Luna), returns home one day with his fiancée, Sonia (Génesis Rodríguez), amid financial difficulties the ranch has been experiencing for quite sometime. Armando and his father believe that Raúl's newfound source of income as a businessman will be the end to this.
A few corny monologues and cheesy sing-a-longs later, we discover Raúl is in the business of drug-dealing, a sin in Armando's eyes, who believe loyalty is above all. This, of course, will lead to a showdown with Onza (Gael García Bernal), the renowned drug-dealer Raúl has been doing business with for quite sometime. I can at least say this film is more eventful and slightly more interesting than John Landis's Three Amigos.
I was instantaneously impressed with Will Ferrell's impeccable Spanish. Apparently, the producers only had one month to make him practically fluent, at least in the screenplay, and either Ferrell had prior experience or is a fast-learner. While this is his weakest work beside Old School, this is one of his finest performances. He immerses himself in the character of Armando, and has clearly seen enough of the cheesy telenovelas in question to at least be granted the right do a spoof on them.
Some scenes will induce eye-rolling, others induce chuckles, yet many induce silence, something I wouldn't have expected with a Will Ferrell comedy. The humor stems from such subtle things like Ferrell and his compadres laughing for an awkwardly long period of time or simply the preposterous action sequences. The material here could clearly be the foundation for a series of inspired shorts (on the "Funny or Die" website, for that matter), or even a Saturday Night Live skit. But extending the film's one-note joke out for seventy-five minutes, minus the five minute credit music video, can be considered not indulgence, but idea-suicide.
Starring: Will Ferrell, Gael García Bernal, Diego Luna, Génesis Rodríguez, and Pedro Armendáriz, Jr. Directed by: Matt Piedmont.
This is a parody of the telenovela style where locations are limited and usually reduced to clearly fake backdrops, animals are incredibly artificial, and the corniness and melodrama in the story is hammed up to unknown levels. The attention to detail and creativity levels that are next-to necessary to make a parody film of this style work are present, but everything else is ostensibly on autopilot.
Will Ferrell is Armando Álvarez, a man who has nothing but the utmost devotion to his father's ranch and their business. His brother, Raúl (Diego Luna), returns home one day with his fiancée, Sonia (Génesis Rodríguez), amid financial difficulties the ranch has been experiencing for quite sometime. Armando and his father believe that Raúl's newfound source of income as a businessman will be the end to this.
A few corny monologues and cheesy sing-a-longs later, we discover Raúl is in the business of drug-dealing, a sin in Armando's eyes, who believe loyalty is above all. This, of course, will lead to a showdown with Onza (Gael García Bernal), the renowned drug-dealer Raúl has been doing business with for quite sometime. I can at least say this film is more eventful and slightly more interesting than John Landis's Three Amigos.
I was instantaneously impressed with Will Ferrell's impeccable Spanish. Apparently, the producers only had one month to make him practically fluent, at least in the screenplay, and either Ferrell had prior experience or is a fast-learner. While this is his weakest work beside Old School, this is one of his finest performances. He immerses himself in the character of Armando, and has clearly seen enough of the cheesy telenovelas in question to at least be granted the right do a spoof on them.
Some scenes will induce eye-rolling, others induce chuckles, yet many induce silence, something I wouldn't have expected with a Will Ferrell comedy. The humor stems from such subtle things like Ferrell and his compadres laughing for an awkwardly long period of time or simply the preposterous action sequences. The material here could clearly be the foundation for a series of inspired shorts (on the "Funny or Die" website, for that matter), or even a Saturday Night Live skit. But extending the film's one-note joke out for seventy-five minutes, minus the five minute credit music video, can be considered not indulgence, but idea-suicide.
Starring: Will Ferrell, Gael García Bernal, Diego Luna, Génesis Rodríguez, and Pedro Armendáriz, Jr. Directed by: Matt Piedmont.