Casa De Mi Padre
An American man in a foreign tongue in Casa De Mi Padre (My Father’s house)
By Jenny Alvarez
Photos by Alfonso De Elias
This film is coming out in theaters March 16th. If you want to watch a 2 hour Spanish movie with English subtitles, you will get to focused on The Alvarez brothers who are searching for a way to save their father’s ranch, but they find themselves in a war with Mexican drug lord. Armando’s younger brother Raul (Diego Luna) shows up with his new fiancée, Sonia (Genesis Rodriguez). Then they will find themselves in a war with Mexico’s most feared drug lord, the mighty Onza (Gael Garcia Bernal). However, is not the best film that I have seen, its humor is rude social criticism. Will Ferrell is unfamiliar with this type of Spanish soap opera, but a good point is that he tried to speak in Spanish (although it was by memorization). On the other hand, Director Matt Piedmont plays it silly, thanks to the use of miniatures and puppets, fake animals, and life-size dolls. Hilarious? Not exactly, it was odd and silly.
Casa De Mi Padre also provides a smart, humorous display about complex U.S. and Mexican relations and a subliminal message about family, love, unity, struggles and odd relations between two nations that go beyond border-crossing, expanding its repertoire to other ethnic stereotypes. Even Cristina Aguilera sings the little track at the beginning of the movie, the script of this Mexican ‘telenovela’ soap is really bad and the dialogue made me smile just a little, due is terrible and others may feel the same way. Certainly, it’s an homage to the Mexican spaghetti western with many mistakes and overacting but is a good opportunity to analyze life is a satire full of complexity and the idea for this film was brilliant!
[nggallery id=32]
