"Rudo y Cursi"

By David Hudson on 05/08/2009

[Updated through 5/10]

"'Rudo y Cursi,' the debut film by Carlos Cuarón, has a bit of everything. Comedy, drama, satire, nostalgia, sports, music, city, country, tits, ass - all you could ever want, really," writes Eric Hynes at indieWIRE. "The first film produced under the Cha Cha Cha shingle - the union of Mexico's cuddly auteurist trinity Alfonso Cuarón, Guillermo del Toro and Alejandro González Iñárritu - 'Rudo y Cursi' is an eager-to-please, mainstream entertainment machine. But as in a well oiled, whirring contraption that skips a gear, the moving parts never click into a working film. Tap on it and it topples."

"Beto and Tato Verdusco are half brothers who work together at a banana plantation and live with their extended family in a village in southern Mexico," begins AO Scott in the New York Times. "When the two of them are suddenly (and somewhat improbably) plucked from rural proletarian obscurity and turned into professional soccer players in Mexico City, they achieve fame as Rudo and Cursi, nicknames that can be translated more or less as tough and corny. 'Rudo y Cursi' lives up to its name, as do its sweet and scrappy heroes, who are played with antic energy by Diego Luna (Beto, the tough one) and Gael García Bernal (Tato, the corny one)."

"'Rudo y Cursi' is as fatalistic as any film noir," writes J Hoberman in the Voice, "but it's played for cartoonish screwball comedy. At once smooth and frantic, filled with cozy clutter and vulgar jive, the movie subsumes its moralizing in frat-house entertainment. What justice can you expect from a world where a man turns on the TV and learns that he's been dumped by his fiancée, or a death threat is followed by the request for an autograph?"

"It's a big screen telenovela that glides along breezily, just skimming the surface of plausibility but never quite making much of a lasting impression," finds Seth Abramovitch in Movieline. "It's frequently funny, though, and much of the credit for what works here goes to the enormously talented two stars, whose chemistry you just can't fake."

"'Rudo y Cursi' begins as a delightful satire of the tackiness and crass excess of the nouveau riche, blessed with the same loose, improvisational, French New Wave-inspired vibe, stellar performances, and dynamite chemistry of 'Y Tu Mamá Tambien,'" writes Nathan Rabin at the AV Club. "Yet Cuarón's light touch abandons him once the film takes an unfortunate detour into contrived melodrama."

"You keep thinking back on how 'También' looked at the outset like a typical teen sex comedy and gently morphed into something sadder and wiser," writes IFC guest critic Gene Seymour. "This time, you're set up by the rueful tone and gritty surroundings for something grander than a typical sports movie - only to end up with less than you expected, even from a typical sports movie."

"[D]espite the shaky, prowling camera capturing glimpses of Latin American poverty, this is, at heart, a glossy party film," finds Henry Stewart in the L Magazine.

Cuarón "turns the farce into a gag-starved 'Dumb and Dumber,'" argues Bill Weber in Slant.

The "plot developments [are] straight out of an 'Afterschool Special,' yet treated by Cuarón with an undeserved level of self-satisfied import, the director oblivious to the fact that just as his protagonists don't quite know 'right' from 'left,' his film doesn't know novelty from banal clichés," writes Nick Schager at Screengrab.

"[W]hereas ['También'] brought its characters to a painful emotional brink, this satirical tale - so slight it's hard to even hate it - is too worried about being liked," writes S James Snyder in Time Out New York.

"I must admit that it does provide some decent entertainment," writes James van Maanen. "But when, toward the finale, it appears that a character is about to meet a violent end, I realized that I didn't much care. Which made me also realize that I could have done without the entire movie."

For indieWIRE, Peter Knegt reports on Bernal, Luna and Cuarón's recent public discussion in New York.

Earlier: Reviews from Sundance.

Update, 5/9: "I won't tell you who wins the Rudo/Cursi showdown, but when it comes to the Cuarón brothers, my money's on Alfonso," writes Dana Stevens in Slate.

Updates, 5/10: Reed Johnson talks with Luna, García Bernal and the Cha Cha Cha guys for the Los Angeles Times.

Online listening tip. Carlos Cuarón on All Things Considered.

[Photo: "Rudo y Cursi," Cha Cha Cha, 2008]

Tags: Alejandro González Iñárritu, Alfonso Cuarón, Carlos Cuarón, Diego Luna, Gael García Bernal, Guillermo del Toro, Rudo y Cursi