Customer Reviews

Rudo Y Cursi

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I saw "Rudo y Cursi" this year at the Sarasota Film Festival and was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked the movie. The main reason I went to see "Rudo y Cursi" was because it starred Gael Garcia Bernal, whose films I generally enjoy. I felt a little unsure about the film going into it, because I didn't know much going into the film and felt this would be a typical sports movie, but I really enjoyed seeing this. The film is truly a story of two brothers more than anything, and, though it does revolve around their passion for sports, it didn't feel like your regular sports film. It does have some of your stereotypical sports film moments, but in the end it was a very unique movie experience. Anyone who enjoys Gael Garcia Bernal films, will definitely love this movie. He is equally serious and humorous in the film and serves as a great counterpart to Diego Luna who plays his brother. I feel that this film can be enjoyed by a wide array of viewers and would suggest this film to anyone, as it is an all around great movie.

'Rudo y Cursi' is a fun, rollicking movie and a cautionary tale to boot. I was lucky enough to see this film's debut at Dallas AFI in early 2009, where it was introduced by writer/director Carlos Cuarón. That night, Cuarón called 'Rudo y Cursi' "a tale of my Mexico and what it is today, good or bad." What we get is Cuarón's comedic/dramatic arc of the gravitational pull of Mexico D.F. on small-city dreamers, an obsession with El Fútbol Mexicano, shady sports promotion, a hyper-aggressive media looking to find and promote stars, here-today-gone-tomorrow success, and - lurking in the background - allusions to the ascendancy of powerful drug lords.

Our audience was split 50-50 between native Spanish and English speakers - the Spanish-speaking half laughed uproariously throughout; the English-speaking half found the proceedings interesting, funny...but maybe not quite that funny. The difference was between the spoken word and the subtitles - I had a friend confirm that half-brothers Tato (Gael García Bernal) and Beto (Diego Luna) are insulting each other throughout in inventive, bluer-than-blue, can-you-top-this street language. The subtitles reflect only a small slice of that linguistic flair.

Like many, I was delighted by the little Easter egg tucked away inside this film: García Bernal's hilariously campy ranchera rendition of Cheap Trick's "I Want You to Want Me" - recast here as "Quiero Que Me Quieras." As director, Carlos Cuarón may not have quite the emotional touch that older brother Alfonso laid down with perfection in Y Tu Mama Tambien, but Carlos definitely has the ear for comedy and cultural touchstones.

As much fun as it was to watch García Bernal and Luna pair up again, my favorite role in the film belonged to Argentine actor Guillermo Francella as sports agent and scout, 'Batuta.' His role in plucking Tato and Beto from obscurity and riding their wave of success - and what follows - rings true at every step. He inhabits that role perfectly.

"Rudo y Cursi" (2009) features two banana-picking brothers playing football (soccer) in their small Mexican village where they are discovered by a scout/scam artist (Guillermo Francella), the film's sometime narrator. Rudo (Diego Luna) is a goalie, and Cursi (Gael Garcia Bernal) is an effective scorer. The scout can only take one of them to Mexico City, so they choose who is to go by a penalty kick. Cursi wins, gets established in pro soccer, and talks the scout into getting his brother onto another team.
Both become successful. Cursi would just as soon be a pop music star and tries his hand at it. His flaw is falling for a beautiful faithless celebrity girl friend, and Rudo's failing is his addictive gambling habit.
Both run into trouble and can't handle success. There are a lot of crooks around ready to fix games, and one brother gets entrapped in a fix which involves the other.
The movie "Y Tu Mama Tambien" was co-written by Carlos Cuaron, but this time he wrote and directed using the same lead actors from "Mama."
In Spanish with English sub-titles, the flick never really shows the two with any real soccer skills, and is short on detailed soccer sequences. The pictures of village life are well-handled, and the movie has many realistic elements.
These two guys aren't the best actors you've ever seen, but they turn in credible enough jobs to keep the plot boiling and the lid ready to pop. Some of the plot features may seem familiar and overworked to you. It reminds me of what a very good "B" movie used to be like in the good old days.

This is a rough-and-tumble film that shows us the personalities of the young men who rise to social and media prominence in a national sport. It shows us the guys behind the flat, cliche-ridden delivery of on-the-field interviews for TV sports and the glamorizing of sports writers and commentators. The film's two central characters are country bumpkins, who happen to be so naturally gifted as athletes that they shoot straight to the top of the game and are soon rolling in dough and luxuries, unaware of the under-the-table wheeling and dealing of their manager and owners.

Brothers - one of them married, one not - compete as much with each other as any team they play against. Given opportunities to learn about the way of the world, they miss every one of them, fixated on what they are really interested in - a singing career for one and high-stakes gambling for the other. It's a recipe for an unhappy ending, but even when matters take a turn for the worse, there are no regrets. There's plenty of cleverness in this film that celebrates sport while satirizing the conventional sports movie. The spectacular plays on the field are off camera, and we get instead the amazed reaction shots of onlookers.

Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna are well matched as the film's two brothers, nicknamed Rudo and Cursi. Bernal has the wonderful ability to play farcical comedy as naturally as he does straight dramatic roles. This film is not the social commentary that we get in the excellent road movie "Y Tu Mama Tambien," which under its comic surface is dead serious. "Rudo y Cursi" is more of a lark and for all that probably less memorable.

If you enjoy Garcia Bernal's and Luna's ensemble acting and Cuaron's films, you'll enjoy this movie. I am a big fan of Y Tu Mama Tambien, and while this movie didn't quite reach that level of awesomeness for me, it did deliver. Garcia Bernal and Luna do great character acting, and the interaction between the Mexican brothers and their Argentine manager is funny and spot-on. However, the humor of this interaction is better understood if you speak Spanish and have some knowledge of regional slang and idioms. I also enjoyed the way the movie is filmed: the shots of Mexican life are really beautiful and respectiful, yet playful.

I don't usually like subtitled movies, I certainly don't enjoy sports movies, I am not interested in soccer and I have only a very vague aquaintance with Spanish.
However, I thoroughly enjoyed this movie from the moment it began through to the very end. You can smell the dust and the sweat in the mostly-natural scenery, feel the frustration in the lives of Rudo and Cursi, enjoy their jokes and laugh at their mishaps, even the occasionally foul language becomes acceptable.
It's a good, well illustrated story.

Although this is a movie set against the background of football, it hardly is a movie about that. Instead it is a tale about two brothers, two brothers played by Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna as Tato and Beto make a living working in a banana plantation both nurture big dreams of for themselves and buying a house for their mother. Tato is discovered during a game of football by a talent scout. This leads to a rift between them. They become rivals playing for opposing teams but their fame is short-lived as their wild lifestyle threatens their fame. It is an great movie and rural Mexico has been photographed gorgeously. Bernal and Luna complement each other well since Y Tu Mama Tambien, another great movie. I give it three and half stars120409

This is a sort of follow on to `Y Tu Mama Tambien' as it brings together the same team from that movie. It stars Diego Luna as Beto and his half brother Tato being played by Gael Garcia Bernal. They work on a banana plantation and struggle to make a decent living - dreaming of the day that they can fulfil the promise they made to their mum and actually build her the house she has always wanted.

Then while they are playing a game of football, a wandering talent scout has the misfortune to get a puncture in their town. He watches the match whilst drinking cold beer and awaiting the repair. He then says they are both good enough to play at club level, but he will only take one. They decide which with a penalty shoot out -as one is striker and the other a goalie.
Tato wins and its off to Mexico city, where he gets to meet the rich and famous and indulge his real passion of singing - badly. He pesters Baton the coach into finding a place for his brother and he manages to get him one.

The story is about love, envy, greed, pride and the sudden realisation that the higher you get, the further you have to fall. There are some really great moral lessons in here all tied up with buckets of humour and real affection. It is a warm story told well, acted superbly and brilliantly written and directed by Carlos Cuaron. At ninety seven minutes it will be over leaving you wanting more, in Spanish (Mexican) with great sub titles, this was one of those films I had been meaning to se for a while and now can not belive I was missing pout for so long - can not recommend highly enough.

Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna struck fireworks with their 2001 'Y tu mamá también' directed be their close associate Carlos Cuarón. Now once again the three men, along with important input from some of the finest talent in Mexico, join in a low key, warmly humorous, well acted and directed and produced RUDO y CURSI. There has been considerable publicity about the movement to raise the importance of Mexican films to the high standards of International films, largely due to the passion of García Bernal, Luna, Cuarón, Alejandro González Iñárritu and Guillermo del Toro. The success of this movement is obvious in this very fine film - a tightly conceived story about the poor families in Mexico who long for the ability to climb the ladder to success in business, fame and comfort, and the Cinderella story recasting brothers played by García Bernal and Luna whose struggle for opportunity leads them into the bumpy relationship with a 'talent scout' (Batuta played with aplomb by the Argentinean actor Guillermo Francella) and to tenuous triumph because of their soccer talent and the inevitable temptations of success in the great Mexico City world.

García Bernal is Tato (to be nicknamed 'Cursi' by his teammates), a wannabe singer whose goal is to make it big in the world of entertainment, using Batuta as his means to get there. Luna is his brother Beto (to be nicknamed 'Rudo' - the alternate title of the film is 'ROUGH AND VULGAR' instead of 'RUDO y CURSI'!) who is married but longs to follow his brother into the fame of the Big League soccer. Each lad lands in Mexico City, each takes advantage of his given soccer talent and each succumbs to personal goals - Rudo to gambling and Cursi to women and singing in silly music videos. Batuto is always on the sidelines (and in the voice over narration) to follow each of brother's successes and failures. The manner in which the two brothers compete and come together creates a moving and tender story ending.

What makes this little film so special is the genuine qualities and ensemble acting that come from García Bernal and Luna but also form the actors portraying the impoverished but proud family of the two boys and the 'big town characters' they encounter in Mexico City. The film feels real and committed, mixing just the right amount of humor, fantasy, and tenderness - thanks to the excellent script by writer/director Carlos Cuarón. It is a pleasure to watch and a very fine statement about the quality of films coming from Mexico. Grady Harp, September 09

Dont watch this movie with family around. lol. Had strong scenes and language but the story plot is good. Two brothers, soccer, bad decisions, and back to square one. Good Movie and may I say Gael = <3