Movie Review -- Casa de mi Padre

Casa de mi Padre is a parody/tribute to low-budget American western movies as well as Spanish telenovelas (soap operas). The movie is heavily laden with clichés from both. You can get a good feel for the movie from the trailer.' rel='nofollow' target='_blank'>http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi1267376409/]trailer. It is also very deliberately made to look extremely low-budget, with more errors than Plan Nine from Outer Space.

I'm pretty hard to please with comedies (preferring dramas and science fiction instead), but thought that Casa was pretty funny, and the audience, which was quite small, seemed to enjoy it as well. In case it isn't obvious, the movie is in Spanish with subtitles. The Spanish was spoken fairly slowly and at a simple level. The title I think was chosen as well to make the statement that the Spanish is understandable as possible to a Gringo audience. At least I was able to understand much of it.

However, 84 minutes of the same joke starts to wear thin. As I started to get a little bored after an hour I started to try to look for some of the more subtle deliberately-made errors. For example, there were a number of close ups of faces wearing mirrored sunglasses, and you could make out microphones, or the whole camera crew, in the reflection. There were lots of shooting scenes, and sometimes if someone was trying to dive out of the line of fire you could see the vest of blood pouches bouncing around under the shirt.

The final scene I think was a parody of the final scene in Scarface (one of the great scenes in American cinema IMHO), but maybe I'm reading too much into it. If the exact same house was used, I wouldn't question it. I do have to give Will Ferrell due credit for having the guts to make a movie 99% in Spanish for an American audience. His Spanish seemed quite good too, at to my ear. I'd be interested to know if they release this in Mexico. It does feature two stars I've seen in several recent Mexican movies.

All things considered, I give the movie a 6 on the 0 to 10 scale.

Quote: Wizard

I'm pretty hard to please with comedies (preferring dramas and science fiction instead), but thought that Casa was pretty funny, and the audience, which was quite small, seemed to enjoy it as well. In case it isn't obvious, the movie is in Spanish with subtitles. The Spanish was spoken fairly slowly and at a simple level. The title I think was chosen as well to make the statement that the Spanish is understandable as possible to a Gringo audience. At least I was able to understand much of it.

Lionsgate has been experimenting with non-English films since the company was founded. Either French, Romanian, or Spanish. The most ambitious one was about 5 years ago, which had no American stars at all, only Mexican telenovela stars.


Will Ferrell was making $20 million per film for about 5 year, up until the Land of the Lost which cost $100 million to make, and was a complete dud at the box office. It seems funny to see him in a film with a $6 million / budget .Maybe he is getting a big percentage if it becomes successful. Maybe it's an easy way to ease back in after a huge flop. People will credit him with taking a big artistic chance.

Diego Luna and Gabriel Garcia have remained popular in Mexico, since there first steamy movie when they were just teenagers using music from before they were born. They are popular in Europe, but have had limited success in making American films.

Quote: pacomartin

Diego Luna and Gabriel Garcia have remained popular in Mexico, since there first steamy movie when they were just teenagers ...

It seems at least one of them is in every recent Mexican movie I got from Netflix. Not that I have any objection. In movies they have in common there is a good chemistry between them. What I find interesting is I think both of them are just average looking. To make it big as a young actor in the U.S. it seems you have to be in the top 1% of good looks.