Last year, Will Ferrell basically did a complete 180 from the characters we're used to seeing him play when he starred in Everything Must Go. Despite being advertised as a dramedy, the story of Ferrell's recently bottomed-out alcoholic was anything but funny. Much to my surprise, Ferrell handled the material really well leading to one of the more quiet surprises of 2011.
His recent comedies, however, have been miss after miss, with his last truly funny movie, in my opinion, being Talladega Nights all the way back in 2006. Despite what many people my age think, Step Brothers was not funny, and 2010's The Other Guys started out promising only to quickly degenerate into the same silly buddy-buddy cop movie that it initially parodied. It isn't that Ferrell stopped being funny (see Adam Sandler for an example of that), it's just that the material he was given (or in some cases the material that he provided himself) left a lot to be desired.
Fast forward to the end of last year when I first learned of Casa De Mi Padre, and when the first teaser trailer popped up. While the concept, Ferrell playing a character named Armando Alvarez and speaking exclusively in Spanish, looked beyond stupid, its Grindhouse-esque approach to the genre was intriguing. It was daring, to say the least.
There isn't much need to describe the plot as it really doesn't matter, but I'll quickly summarize anyway. Ferrell plays Armando Alvarez, a rancher on the family farm. His father takes every opportunity imaginable to tell Armando how dumb he is while praising Armando's younger brother Raul (Diego Luna). When Raul returns home with his gorgeous fiance Sonia (Genesis Rodriguez), he brings with him a drug-based turf war that includes local kingpin Onza (Gael Garcia Benral), Mexican police and American DEA officers (the head officer is played by a hilarious Nick Offerman). Armando now must protect the family ranch (I think that's the point), while falling for Sonia along the way.
Simply put, Casa De Mi Padre is the most ridiculous movie I think I've ever seen. Whether or not you enjoy this will depend entirely on how far you allow yourself to be absorbed by what it is the filmmakers are trying to do, which is to satirize an entire genre of film and television. This isn't the type of movie where you can dismiss things as being stupid, as that is completely the point. Everything that occurs on screen is a joke except for the story and the acting.
Very much in the style of the over-the-top melodramatics that is Spanish cinema and television, the actors completely overact their parts. In fact, it's as if the actors don't realize that they are part of an incredible gimmick. That's part of the fun and appeal of Casa. The humor comes mostly from the concept itself and not from big laugh out loud moments created by the characters, although there are several of those as well.
Continuity errors are added on purpose, scenery appears as obvious set pieces, horses and trucks seem to be interchanged mid-scene, film appears broken and badly put back together, and an entire sequence is replaced with an apology from the "cinematographer" explaining why they don't have the film anymore. This convenient missing reel actually solves what appears to be an unsolvable plot issue. These examples really only scratch the surface.
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The movie feels like it takes place in the 1970s, and the copyright date even says so, but the American DEA officers are driving brand new SUVs and nobody seems to question it. The dialogue, while written to feel as if it's furthering the faux-seriousness of the plot, is often hilarious for doing just that. There is a psychodelic hallucination sequence involving an animatronic mountain lion near the beginning of the second half of the movie that takes the lunacy one step too far, if that's even possible, but it quickly regains its "composure."
Hardly a moment went by that I wasn't thoroughly amused by what was going on. First and foremost is the fact that Ferrell is playing a Mexican and speaking Spanish. At one point, a flashback shows a young Armando as being played by a young Hispanic boy. Casa feels very much like it could have been, and maybe should have been, directed by Robert Rodriguez: it fits in nicely with movies like Planet Terror and Machete, and in many ways goes farther with the spoof style than those films do. In a way, I kind of wish Casa hadn't been shot in such good quality to take it even one step further.
If you accept Casa De Mi Padre for what it is, it's a really amusing and unique experience.
Rating: 9/11
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