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Casa De Mi Padre

March 17, 2012 by · Comments Off on Casa De Mi Padre 

Casa De Mi Padre, It’s silly-con-queso all the way in “Casa de Mi Padre.” The Spanish-language spoof, which stars Will Ferrell as the dim-bulb son of a respected rancher, is a south-of-the-border “Bonanza” with faux-schlocky production values — a goofy mix of cornball earnestness, telenovela melodrama and, for good measure, magical realism with stuffed animals. And it’s shot in “MexicoScope,” as the opening credit sequence proclaims.

Those credits are a glorious throwback, promising a high level of genre-bending delirium. There’s the over-the-top graphics (the consuming fire of passion!), the close-up of blood-red lips, the grandiose title song belted out by Christina Aguilera. But the giddy laughs that ensue, though sometimes inspired, are too few and far between.
It’s as if the filmmakers, satisfied to have all the pieces assembled — and to have landed the involvement of Gael Garc?a Bernal and Diego Luna — are content to simply repeat themselves and hope for the best, not unlike the flying-bullet overkill that subs for true marksmanship in the movie’s slo-mo shootouts.

Central to the premise is the novelty of an Anglo star speaking Spanish, and Ferrell’s textbook diction mines some yuks. To its credit, though, the film doesn’t get stuck in that shtick, offering instead the equal-opportunity joke of purposely wooden dialogue for all its characters.

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