Truly Dreadful Film

Tied for the best movie I have ever seen

I gave it a 7.5 out of 10

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Make no mistake about it, this film does not have any great message but its' sure fun to watch. It's full of zest and sparkle and never a dull moment.There are two brothers – one is married with children and the other single. They both work on a banana plantation and are cajoled into signing up to play soccer in the big leagues in Mexico City. The laughs start almost right away. If you like a film that can laugh at itself and its' society than this may be for you. Everyone and everything gets a good thumping. Also the focus is not on soccer – this is not a sports movie.

Against the backdrop of a professional women's baseball league, Penny Marshall's "A League of their Own" is best remembered for its sibling rivalry between wartime sisters Dottie(Geena Davis) and Kip Keller(Lori Petty), who goes head-to-head in the big game, a prerequisite of the inspirational sports film that completes the genre's form. Disparate from John G. Avildsen's "Rocky", and other movies of its ilk, in which nobody would have mourned Apollo Creed(Carl Weathers) had he lost, Marshall's film is unique because you're divided, happy as you are for Kip, the moviegoer also sympathizes with the loser(well, that's what the film is calibrated for), Dollie, who drops the ball after Kit blows off the third base coach's signal to stop, and proceeds to run roughshod over her sister in a violent homeplate collision. After all, Dollie was responsible for Kip's career. Similarly, in "Rudo y Cursi", it's the loser you feel for, Tato(Gael Garcia Bernal), whose penalty kick is blocked by his brother Beto(Diego Luna), who unlike Kip, loses too, while seemingly the victor, because he was supposed to throw the game. In both films, albeit circumstantially different, there are no winners where a winner is the genre norm. "Rudo y Cursi" is a sports film without catharsis, which puts this Mexican import in the same league as Antonio Cuaron's recent "Sugar", another underdog sports story that ends on a decidedly different key from its Hollywood counterparts.Neither Davis nor Petty(or Madonna for that matter) had a lick of baseball talent, but through the magic of rhetorical editing(quick cuts), wishful thinking prevailed, and the audience became co-conspirators in the fiction that Davis could swing for the fences with regularity, while Petty took the mound with an arsenal of effective pitches. In "Rudo y Cursi", when Batua the scout(played by Gullimero Francella) gauges the brothers' potential in a pick-up soccer game, he's the only witness, because the camera stays on him, having a cold one. This directorial choice is made time and time again, a self-reflexive and humorous aside about actors faking athletic greatness, as the moviegoer never actually sees Tato score a goal, nor Beto successfully defend the net; the moviegoer sees reaction shots, instead of first-hand accounts of athletic mimicry. There's no need for a double to do the tricky stuff(e.g. Moira Kelly and D.B. Sweeney's doubles in "The Cutting Edge"); there's nobody to double for. The montage, the most expedient way to persuade the audience that the actor is excelling at his/her sport(best recent example: Hillary Swank in Clint Eastwood's "Million Dollar Baby"), gets parodied in a scene where the soccer ball in quick succession, hits the back of the net from the off-screen leg of Tato, kicking in the negative space. When the benchwarmer finally sees some game action and scores his first goal, the moviegoer sees his family, in unison, shouting, "Goal!" instead of Bernal putting his best foot forward, literally, in a diegetically enhanced fantasy camp for actors. Not satisfied with only its atypical approach towards depicting sports in a sports movie, "Rudo y Cursi" is no etnography(like Gregory Nava's "El Norte", or "Mi Familia"), in which a western audience expects Tato and Beto to act in an explicitly prescribed way.More likely than not, the filmic norm of "wetbacks" in most narratives about the Hispanic culture, shows its people as the conscientious sort who send money back home to their destitute families they left behind. Arguably, in "Rudo y Cursi", the brothers go "gringo", as Tato lavishes his high maintenance girlfriend with exorbitantly priced gifts(for starters, a SUV), while Beto gambles his money away at back-room casinos. Where's mama's SUV; where's mama's house, the one that her sons promised to build for her? Mama does eventually get the house of her dreams, but not from her American-like sons. Like Ridley Scott's "American Gangster", mama gets her house from a gangster, her daughter's husband. Tato and Beto are people like us: Americans, "football" players who have American football player counterparts.(Tato could be Tony Romo, a player distracted by her excessively attractive celebrity girlfriend, while Beto could retired quarterback Art Schlichter, who had a severe gambling problem while throwing passes for the Baltimore Colts in the early-eighties.)

I enjoyed Rudo y Cursi, directed by Carlos Cuaron, but it's hardly a ground breaking work of art. I might describe it as a pleasant way to while away a couple of hours but it's fairly lightweight.The story follows the fortunes of two banana plantation workers in Mexico who are 'discovered' by a football scout Batuta (and by football I mean the game that the whole world barring America calls football, ie soccer) and taken to play in the Big City, in this case, Mexico City. The moral of the story is be careful what you wish for. Escaping a mundane life of dull mediocrity and relative poverty in the countryside, our heroes find the life of a professional soccer player a mixed blessing and never reach their full potential, but instead slip into bad habits and totally lose any semblance of self discipline they ever had.Rudo harbors delusions that he can be a pop star (fabulous scenes of Gael Garcia Bernal making a music video! Probably worth the ticket price alone….) and Cursi cannot escape his gambling habit. Caught in a cycle of debt, Cursi must 'throw' a match to keep creditors off his back, while Rudo must win to keep his career on track, or sink without trace back into the obscurity from which they both came. His woman has already dumped him and moved on.Overseeing all this, with an air of Latin American Magic Realism, is the world weary scout Batuta (Guillermo Francella).The movie features nice performances from Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna. If Gael Garcia Bernal isn't one of the cutest guys on the planet, then I don't know who is? And not only is his face fabulous to look at for extended periods of time, but he can act and I also get the feeling he has a sense of humour and can laugh at himself just a little, an asset I always find attractive! There is a wonderful scene of Rudo – and Bernal is not the tallest guy in movies – pants around his ankles having sex in his kitchen with his leggy girlfriend who is built like a giraffe. There aren't many actors willing to make themselves look that undignified, but it's a priceless attribute! Cursi meanwhile, is being outshone by his wife Tona (Adriana Paz) who has taken advantage of his migration to the city to launch her own career. But unable to escape his gambling, he falls into the clutches of creditors.It's an interesting but fairly superficial look at a culture where soccer is a cut throat game to be won at all costs, a way of life and an escape from poverty, as well as a game of skill and beauty. As a pairing of Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna, I much preferred Y tu Mama Tambien, which I felt was a film with much more substance. But Rudo y Cursi whiled away a not unpleasant two hours on a Friday evening. Rent it if you missed it in theatres.

I saw this at the Edinburgh International Film Festival and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The two main characters are brothers and polar opposites in terms of the roles they have. One being fun, jokey laughable while the other is more gritty, serious and intense. Depending on who was on screen, the story weaved from pleasing comedy to suspenseful drama. The movie is based around the 2 brothers being plucked from banana plantation obscurity into footballing limelight but this is by no means a movie about football. It's more about the the brothers yearning for fame and fortune and their determination to provide better lives for their loved ones. The directors and actors were present at the screening and asked the audience to watch this "not as a foreign movie but simply as a movie." With that in mind, don't go to see this looking for strong statement about Mexico City, go and see it for the story and acting itself.