Customer Reviews

Only Human

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Only Human is a Spanish-language Meet the Parents that has the courage to go for Royal Tenenbaums weirdness and higher stakes instead of routine setups and gags.

In Only Human, the nervous fiancé, Rafi, is caught in a variety of compromising positions as he meets his soon-to-be family for the first time, but the tension is based in reality. Rafi is Palestinian, and his fiancée, Leni, is Jewish. When blind grandpa swings his old Israeli army rifle around the room, Rafi has legitimate reason to be fearful if grandpa finds out he's a Muslim. When Rafi accidentally drops a block of frozen soup out the window, it might be his lover's dad he snuffed out on the sidewalk below. Only the lightness of the film, the believable reactions of the characters and the understandable craziness of the Jewish Spanish family keep these moments from becoming nerve-racking.

Audiences will believe mom's changing emotions, dad's heck of a concussion, Rafi's palpable nervousness, and the sibling rivalry between Leni and her prettier sister that blooms into a fight of break-up proportions by film's end. Audiences will believe Leni's newly religious brother would put a duck in the toilet.

Only Human is only held back from great success on DVD because it's not in English. Here's hoping audiences will give subtitles a chance for this one.

DVD Extras: None.

-- Brendan Howard

I saw Only Human at the local independent cinema, thinking it might be amusing. Turns out it is a very funny Spanish film and I laughed so much, I had tears coming out of my eyes at times. The plot involves a daughter bringing her boyfriend/fiance home to meet her Jewish/Spanish family for the first time. If you crossed Charlie Chaplin & Lena Wertmueller and asked them to write a film about a Spanish-Jewish family, this is what you might get. One of the funniest films I've seen in years. Check it out!

ONLY HUMAN explores prejudice, but not on a worldly scale. Instead it focuses on one family and how their past and present attitudes may eventually spell out their futures. And it's damn funny.

Dealing with the Palestinian/Israeli equation is touchy at the best of times, but laughing at it is something most probably don't even think about.

When an Israeli Jew brings home her fiancé, it's usually a time for celebration. So when Leni (Marian Aguilera, THE RECKONING), the daughter of a nice Jewish family, brings home her future husband, one would think it'll spark smiles and joy. But Leni's man Rafi (Guillermo Toledo) shows up on her parents' doorstep with her and we immediately know there are going to be ...uh ...problems. He's a Palestinian and he's ducking into the den of a practicing Jewish family.

Usually this type of set up would spark dramatic elements but here we're given a hilarious take on one family and how they come to grips with their daughter's choice. Not only that, but Rafi has to come to terms with an accident that may have killed Leni's father.

Getting ready for dinner, Rafi is introduced to this rather wacky family. There's the nymphomaniac sister, a blind, gun-toting grandfather, the overly-religious brother, and the protective mother. Leni's father is supposed to show up for the dinner but is late for some reason. Leni's younger sister (the nympho) believes their father is having an affair, but only Rafi really knows what may have happened to him. While taking the evening's soup out of the freezer, Rafi accidentally drops it out the kitchen window, and the frozen block falls several stories before landing on someone's head; Leni's dad? No. It couldn't be, could it? Now another Palestinian has possibly killed a Jew, this time with a new weapon!

Rafi and Leni must contend with their own inherent prejudices while trying to save their future, and prevent the evening from disintegrating into a quagmire of misunderstandings.

The comedy is both in the dialogue and physical. Rafi tries to find out what's happening to the man below who's head was bashed by the frozen soup. He goes into the bathroom and peers out its window. In the meantime, Leni's grandfather (blind) lumbers in to take a pee, and Rafi gets into an unusual position on the toilet in order to avoid being discovered by Grandpa.

This is a refreshing story that brings high marks for comedy into a realm not normally reserved for such things. The only downside is that the dialogue is sometimes rapid and for those who don't speak Spanish (the movie was shot in Spain), it's often times difficult to read the subtitles and keep up with the action onscreen. Otherwise this is an excellent flick.

Here is a screamingly funny post-9/11 comedy originating from a country where factional violence and terrorism are no joke. It substitutes an engaged couple--consisting of a Spanish Jew and a Palestinian man--for the couples divided by social class in classic Hollywood screwball comedies (which it resembles a great deal). Blended into the mix is the type of tightly-paced commedia del arte practiced by Moliere. Everything is ratcheted up a notch by the archetypal Latin temperaments of its characters, making ONLY HUMAN, to coin a phrase, a nearly perfect "screwball comedy of manners."

Rafi, the Palestinian, has to meet the fiancee's Jewish family: the neurotic mother, the shell-shocked grandpa, the nymphomaniac sister, the faddishly-Orthodox teenage brother, and the baby sister, who is the sole witness to an act of terrorism that involves a block of frozen soup falling from a third-story window onto a hapless passer-by. Grandpa, meanwhile, demonstrates that even though he is blind and half-deaf, he can still load a rifle in record time.

The question propelling the plot is, "Where's Papa?" Insecurities among the characters gather steadily into a perfect storm that swirls with sight gag after brilliant sight gag. I don't want to give away the ending, but let's just say it involves projectile vomiting, a chase to Dad's office, lovers caught in flagrante delicto, and a convalescent baby duck gone missing. Oh, and, true to Chekhov's Law, the firearm introduced in the beginning goes off in the Third Act, with hilarious consequences.

The antics are well-supported by a score reminiscent of Nino Rota's best work for Fellini. Guillermo Toledo, as Rafi, is a stand-out, even among this wonderful cast--his face registers the comic pain of a man who has been cast in a role he cannot escape. The harder he tries, the more he reinforces the stereotypes he must somehow cope with.

Howard Hawks, director of some of the best American screwball comedies, once summed up the definition of a good film in six words: "Three great scenes; no bad scenes." I nicked one star from my rating for a scene that almost violates the second clause. Still, no movie in recent memory has made me laugh so hard and so often, and for that all is forgiven.

ONLY HUMAN, a Spanish film from 2004, will shortly make its U.S. debut in the art theaters. It's a comedy about cross culturalism that'll leave you chuckling all the way home.

Set in Spain, Leni (Marian Aguilera), a yuppie Jewish woman living on her own, brings fiance Rafi (Guillermo Toledo), a college professor, home to dinner to meet the rest of the folks. In the high rise apartment in which the family lives are Leni's stereotypical Jewish mother Gloria (Norma Aleandro), her younger brother David (Fernando Ramallo), who annoys everyone with his recent conversion to strict fundamental Judaism, her sultry and promiscuous belly-dancer sister Tania (Maria Botto), Tania's precocious pre-adolescent daughter Paula (Alba Molinero), who, at Rafi's arrival, is playing at being pregnant, and Leni's blind and confused grandfather Dudu (Max Berliner), a concentration camp survivor who fought the British in Palestine and who treasures an old (and occasionally loaded) Enfield rifle from the good old days. Leni's father Ernesto (Mario Martin) is not yet back from the office, and David's pet duckling is in the bathroom's bidet. The stage is thus set.

Rafi and Leni share a secret; the former is a Palestinian. At first, Rafi is cagey when revealing his origins to the rest of the clan and they think him an Israeli Jew. But in a private moment with Gloria, the engaged couple reveal the secret. Mom's initial reaction is an emotional outburst; the relationship won't work because the differences go too deep. But, after Leni appeals to her sense of fair play, Gloria hugs Rafi, welcomes him to the family, and asks that he defrost the dinner's first course, a soup, which Rafi finds in a very large tub frozen rock solid in the freezer. While struggling to get the soup out of its container and into a pot, the tub slips from his grasp and tumbles out an open window (which is several stories up) into the darkness of the evening. Only Paula witnesses the incident.

Claiming that he must "feed the meter", Rafi descends to the pavement to retrieve the soup only to find it's struck a male passer-by, who's lying face down with a bloody contusion to the head. So far, there've been no witnesses. Rafi, in a panic, summons Leni down to the street. Without looking at the injured man, Leni promises to anonymously call an ambulance, but persuades her fiance to tell nobody. After all, it could get into the press, and their vulnerable relationship might not survive the publicity. Then, after they return to the apartment (with the soup) as if nothing has happened, Rafi begins to suspect that the unconscious (or dead?) man may be Leni's still absent father. But, then again, maybe not because Tania has previously confided that Old Dad has a mistress, with whom he may even now be dallying. What's poor Rafi to do? Events complicate and escalate when Rafi later looks out the window to observe a woman stealing the downed unfortunate's wallet. And, shortly thereafter, the body disappears. Was it taken away in the ambulance that just passed by?

ONLY HUMAN is an enormously engaging and clever comedy involving quirky, endearing characters. The film is all the more notable because it doesn't shy away from the cultural differences that have otherwise caused so much violence, death, and hatred in the Middle East. The film's creators acknowledge such late in the film when Leni and Rafi, in a moment of stress, shout at each other the historical and traditional reasons why each side, Israeli and Palestinian, is convinced of its righteous claim on the Holy Land. But this confrontation is only a short sequence in a delightful farce of accident, circumstance and mistaken identity. I left the preview screening feeling good about the characters and their (our) shared humanity.

Saw this movie on tv weeks ago and could not imagine not having it on my shelf. This is hilarious, regardless of your take on the Israeli/Palestinian issue.

Take an eccentric Sephardic Jewish family living in Spain, mix in a nervous Palestinian Spaniard who has fallen in love with one of the Jewish family's daughters for good measure, and you get a hilarious mix of situations that develop quickly out of control. I have Spanish and Cuban relatives and I am familiar with Latin society and culture. What makes this movie so joyous is the story-line, which shows us that in spite of our differences - we are ALL HUMAN and we all want to be happy and to live in peace and prosperity. The tension that exists between the Jewish family and the future Palestinian son-in-law eventually dissolves. In the end, and in spite of the representative biases that the people in the story show, love conquers all. The movie has a series of sub-plots that all come together seamlessly and in quite funny ways. My wife and I could not stop laughing at the ridiculous situations that the protagonists get themselves in and then, in the end, manage to reconcile. The movie is in Spanish with English sub-titles. Highly recommended for those out there who still believe in the goodness of humanity and the healing power of love.

The Bottom Line:

A hilarious comedy that deserves praise for its reluctance to fall back upon a single joke, Only Human continually reinvents itself in its sucessful quest to make us laugh; with hilarious sitations and well-drawn characters, it's a successful comedy that only gets funnier the more you know about the Palestinian-Jewish conflict.

The other 5 star reviews are fine. A very light comedy about a very serious subject that works. I enjoyed the whole thing (certainly one the best romantic comedies I have ever seen in any language). I haven't seen Norma Aleandro do anything half-way, and she makes this shine. The rest of the main cast and supporting cast were nothing less than superb. To everyone involved in making this film- bravo, bravo, bravo!

A Palestinian guy named Rafi is understandably nervous about visiting the Jewish family of his girlfriend Leni. But, after meeting the gun toting grandfather, obsessively Orthodox brother, nympho sister, bratty niece and stressed out mother, Rafi realizes he's in for an even more crazy night than he bargained for.

This is the sort of comedy that isn't afraid to go to extremes in search of laughs. Consider that the main plot involves a destructive Tupperware container of frozen soup and you'll see just weirdly original this film is. It draws from the classic screwball comedies of Howard Hawks and others. Yet is also modern and relevant in it's focus on an inter-religious relationship and the Middle East conflict. One of the better Spanish language films I have seen and miles ahead of the predictable sight gags and crude yet boring humor that dominates so many Hollywood comedies nowadays.