User Reviews

Beto and Tato are half brothers eking out a living in Southern Mexico. When we first meet them, they are at a banana plantation. Little do they know what their lives will turn out to be after they meet Batuta, an unscrupulous soccer scout, who just happens to stop at their small village in the South of the country. Batuta sees an opportunity to sell the boys, who he sees playing and show great potential, to professional teams in the capital.

Tato, who becomes cursi, or a cornball, loves to sing the sugar sweet ballads and has dreams of really making it as a singer. Beto, the tough one, has a passion for gambling; Beto appears to have a knack for winning. As both guys settle into the game, they prove themselves to be assets for the different teams they play. With fame comes money and an opportunity to explore what they really wanted to do in the first place.

After Tato records a video, he attracts the opportunist Maya, who sees in this man, her ticket to a better life. Unfortunately, he doesn't realize that Maya only wants to get whatever she can from this hick boy. Beto, on the other hand, falls prey of a loan shark who introduces him to a private gambling club where, after winning initially, he ends up owing his life to the ruthless people that want to collect their money no matter what.

Carlos Cuaron, brother of Alfonso, comes from a family that are deeply involved in the Mexican cinema. In fact, he was part of the team behind the much better ¨Y tu mama tambien¨, directed by his brother Alfonso. This film was not exactly his first one as a director, and he could have used a lighter tone. The movie goes downhill after the somber fate the brothers suffer toward the end of the picture, which should not surprise anyone because in most cases, these unsophisticated boys become victims of their own successes.

The best thing in the film are Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna. Both actors show an amazing chemistry where one compliments the other. They give excellent reading to the two peasant boys that go from rags to riches, back to rags. The next best thing is Argentine actor Guillermo Francella who as Batuta gives a surprising performance as the scout that gives the boys a taste of an unexpected life they would never have thought they could have.

Against the backdrop of a professional women's baseball league, Penny Marshall's "A League of their Own" is best remembered for its sibling rivalry between wartime sisters Dottie(Geena Davis) and Kip Keller(Lori Petty), who goes head-to-head in the big game, a prerequisite of the inspirational sports film that completes the genre's form. Disparate from John G. Avildsen's "Rocky", and other movies of its ilk, in which nobody would have mourned Apollo Creed(Carl Weathers) had he lost, Marshall's film is unique because you're divided, happy as you are for Kip, the moviegoer also sympathizes with the loser(well, that's what the film is calibrated for), Dollie, who drops the ball after Kit blows off the third base coach's signal to stop, and proceeds to run roughshod over her sister in a violent homeplate collision. After all, Dollie was responsible for Kip's career. Similarly, in "Rudo y Cursi", it's the loser you feel for, Tato(Gael Garcia Bernal), whose penalty kick is blocked by his brother Beto(Diego Luna), who unlike Kip, loses too, while seemingly the victor, because he was supposed to throw the game. In both films, albeit circumstantially different, there are no winners where a winner is the genre norm. "Rudo y Cursi" is a sports film without catharsis, which puts this Mexican import in the same league as Antonio Cuaron's recent "Sugar", another underdog sports story that ends on a decidedly different key from its Hollywood counterparts.

Neither Davis nor Petty(or Madonna for that matter) had a lick of baseball talent, but through the magic of rhetorical editing(quick cuts), wishful thinking prevailed, and the audience became co-conspirators in the fiction that Davis could swing for the fences with regularity, while Petty took the mound with an arsenal of effective pitches. In "Rudo y Cursi", when Batua the scout(played by Gullimero Francella) gauges the brothers' potential in a pick-up soccer game, he's the only witness, because the camera stays on him, having a cold one. This directorial choice is made time and time again, a self-reflexive and humorous aside about actors faking athletic greatness, as the moviegoer never actually sees Tato score a goal, nor Beto successfully defend the net; the moviegoer sees reaction shots, instead of first-hand accounts of athletic mimicry. There's no need for a double to do the tricky stuff(e.g. Moira Kelly and D.B. Sweeney's doubles in "The Cutting Edge"); there's nobody to double for. The montage, the most expedient way to persuade the audience that the actor is excelling at his/her sport(best recent example: Hillary Swank in Clint Eastwood's "Million Dollar Baby"), gets parodied in a scene where the soccer ball in quick succession, hits the back of the net from the off-screen leg of Tato, kicking in the negative space. When the benchwarmer finally sees some game action and scores his first goal, the moviegoer sees his family, in unison, shouting, "Goal!" instead of Bernal putting his best foot forward, literally, in a diegetically enhanced fantasy camp for actors. Not satisfied with only its atypical approach towards depicting sports in a sports movie, "Rudo y Cursi" is no etnography(like Gregory Nava's "El Norte", or "Mi Familia"), in which a western audience expects Tato and Beto to act in an explicitly prescribed way.

More likely than not, the filmic norm of "wetbacks" in most narratives about the Hispanic culture, shows its people as the conscientious sort who send money back home to their destitute families they left behind. Arguably, in "Rudo y Cursi", the brothers go "gringo", as Tato lavishes his high maintenance girlfriend with exorbitantly priced gifts(for starters, a SUV), while Beto gambles his money away at back-room casinos. Where's mama's SUV; where's mama's house, the one that her sons promised to build for her? Mama does eventually get the house of her dreams, but not from her American-like sons. Like Ridley Scott's "American Gangster", mama gets her house from a gangster, her daughter's husband. Tato and Beto are people like us: Americans, "football" players who have American football player counterparts.(Tato could be Tony Romo, a player distracted by her excessively attractive celebrity girlfriend, while Beto could retired quarterback Art Schlichter, who had a severe gambling problem while throwing passes for the Baltimore Colts in the early-eighties.)

Well, this movie had no plot, no rhythm, and never could decide whether it wanted to be an absurd caricature of the world of soccer or a serious drama, and often went from one genre to another many times within a single scene, without any warning whatsoever but a cheesy and poorly placed music cue.

¿Also, do you know how they say Soccer is unfilmable? Well Cuarón finds the perfect way of addressing this issue: by almost not showing the game at all. This hardly qualifies as a soccer picture.

Also, why i Said it was malicious: first of all, the generic "ranchero" accent Gael and Diego use... so, you filmmakers really think all poor people from small towns in the province are this Dumb? Every laugh they get from the audience comes from the fact that this is "stupid small town people" and almost never from the cleverness of the script or the logic within the plot, which, as I said before, is nonexistent. El Rudo y el Cursi seem to get punished at the end of the movie for no reason at all but for having achieved success playing football, as if that was a bad thing. Also, by having a narcotraficante marring the sister of the two main characters and saving the family from complete ruin with his dirty power and money in the process, they perpetuate the myth that narcotrafico helps Mexico moving forward... It Doesn't.

The Good Things: The Chemistry between the two protagonists, this guys can act without a script, just being the buddies they are.

The Cinematography, is great.

The attack they do on Jorge Vergara's Omnilife, showing how he takes advantage of his employees.

Just to finish: Cuarón, recently, slammed the Mexican movie critics by calling them unprepared and jealous of the Mexicans that succeed, because they almost universally slammed his movie first. He has a point, but also the dumb, unprepared, jealous critics who called his movie bad in the first place.

This film deals with the question of celebrity, more specifically the incapacity of talented people who come from lower level classes to really grasp an unique opportunity to ascend to an upper social and economic class, although having acknowledged this chance and desired very much to realize it. Rudo and Cursi demonstrate, in fact, their incredible blindness as to the many dangers they would eventually meet in their way to popularity and affluence. Being so terribly incapable, socially and psychologically, of recognizing those threats, they are easily entangled in them, finally sinking again into the poverty and the mediocrity they had come from.

As in Mexico, also in Brazil and most of Latin American countries, soccer is one of few routes a boy who comes from the lower classes has, in order to improve his and his family's life conditions. And if he is a talented player as well as intelligent, determined and has the right contacts, we can imagine that he will really amplify his chances of success.

However, this happy end is nothing more than an exception: the recurrent story we witness in all of these countries is that, without a minimum psychological structure and proper guidance, these youngsters – like Rudo and Cursi – are hardly able to take advantage of such an opportunity, and will almost inevitably become preys of those vultures – pseudo-friends, self-seeking lovers, dishonest coaches, drug dealers, clumsy or incompetent relatives, swindling partners and intolerant and sadistic fans – who tirelessly and possessively hover all the time around their victims.

A short sequence in the film that, in my opinion, synthesizes a paradoxical point in the relationship between celebrities and their fans. The sequence has no more than one minute, and occurs at 1 hour and 11 minutes of the beginning: in front of a hotel, the soccer player Cursi is approached by two fans. Although they ask him an autograph, these men paradoxically also threaten the player's physical integrity, unless he succeeds in scoring against the opponent team, Nepaleros, in the decisive game, the next day! What is quite interesting in this scene is the fact that, being a famous soccer player in a country in which this sport is so popular, Cursi is inevitably surrounded by many of these frightening hooligans, who may be able to declare their total love to the player provided he never fails, but may also be implacable with him at the slightest fault.

My theory is that we can recognize nowadays in the world of soccer not one, but two somewhat different categories of hooligans – although both are characterized by an irrational violence against their opponents. The first and most common category of hooligan is the "traditional" one, in which the individual is a proud member of an "army" formed around the soccer team he worships, aimed to systematically fight the adversary teams. These delinquent fans basically imagine themselves as "warriors" invested by their beloved organization with the mission of destroying Evil, represented by the other team. "Hooligans", a film made by Lexi Alexander in 2005 with Elijah Wood in the main role clearly exemplifies this category of criminal.

A "second level" of hooliganism exists, however; and, although it may be less frequent, it is somewhat more complex: an additional psychological component may be present in his profile, besides the mentioned proneness to perform collective acts of violence. What I mean is that there is a special type of soccer fan who is so fanatically involved with fighting his team's enemies that the slightest possibility of failure in this mission is simply unbearable to him.

My guess is that this particular kind of hooligan is mainly found in poor and emergent countries. Raised up in the local society's lowest socio-economic levels, many of these individuals had experienced poverty, abandonment, lack of values, violence and even abuse for the most part of their lives, in the miserable slums in which they grew up. It shouldn't, therefore, be a surprise to anyone that they come to show an abnormally great necessity of something – for instance, his belonging to such a group of "warriors" – to be strongly tied to.

Add to this frame an permanent (and understandable) feeling of frustration, an intimately restrained rage and some not so conscious believes such as: "The world is evil", "I deserve more", "Nobody is reliable" and/or "The enemy is everywhere", and the scenario is ready for a violent reaction of such a fan against an insubordinate idol who eventually fail to correspond to this fan's paranoid expectations.

Having written this, it is almost impossible for me not to remember the tragic murder of Andrés Escobar, central back of Colombia at the World Football Cup of 1994, who scored against his own team, leading to the opponent's – the USA – victory. Some time after that game, when leaving a nightclub in his own country, Escobar was shot eleven times by four men. Perhaps, in "Rudo y Cursi", poor Cursi was aware of this episode, when he eagerly tried to please those two fans who asked him an autograph!

Carlos Cuaron both wrote the screenplay & directed this rather standard story of 2 brothers who besides caring (when not fighting) for each other , their families & most of all football.

We here in the USA call it Soccer.

They live & love life the way they love football. with complete intensity & devotion.

There are the usual stumbling blocks in there way, but they play right through them.

What makes this comic-drama stand out from the rest are its stars.

GAEL GARCIA-BERNAL & DIEGO LUNA

In real life both stars are friends from childhood & both have given first rate performances in other films.

They co-starred in 'Y Tu Mama Tambien' a few years back. They were superb in that & are the magnificent here.

All the performances are great, the entire production first rate, Gael even sings in this & is fine.

The movie is first rate entertainment, the football scenes are exciting. Story may be old fashioned but all else is fresh & new.

Ratings: ***1/2 (out of 4) 93 points (out of 100) IMDb 9 (out of 10)

Make no mistake about it, this film does not have any great message but its' sure fun to watch. It's full of zest and sparkle and never a dull moment.

There are two brothers – one is married with children and the other single. They both work on a banana plantation and are cajoled into signing up to play soccer in the big leagues in Mexico City. The laughs start almost right away. If you like a film that can laugh at itself and its' society than this may be for you. Everyone and everything gets a good thumping. Also the focus is not on soccer – this is not a sports movie.

I enjoyed Rudo y Cursi, directed by Carlos Cuaron, but it's hardly a ground breaking work of art. I might describe it as a pleasant way to while away a couple of hours but it's fairly lightweight.

The story follows the fortunes of two banana plantation workers in Mexico who are 'discovered' by a football scout Batuta (and by football I mean the game that the whole world barring America calls football, ie soccer) and taken to play in the Big City, in this case, Mexico City. The moral of the story is be careful what you wish for. Escaping a mundane life of dull mediocrity and relative poverty in the countryside, our heroes find the life of a professional soccer player a mixed blessing and never reach their full potential, but instead slip into bad habits and totally lose any semblance of self discipline they ever had.

Rudo harbors delusions that he can be a pop star (fabulous scenes of Gael Garcia Bernal making a music video! Probably worth the ticket price alone….) and Cursi cannot escape his gambling habit. Caught in a cycle of debt, Cursi must 'throw' a match to keep creditors off his back, while Rudo must win to keep his career on track, or sink without trace back into the obscurity from which they both came. His woman has already dumped him and moved on.

Overseeing all this, with an air of Latin American Magic Realism, is the world weary scout Batuta (Guillermo Francella).

The movie features nice performances from Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna. If Gael Garcia Bernal isn't one of the cutest guys on the planet, then I don't know who is? And not only is his face fabulous to look at for extended periods of time, but he can act and I also get the feeling he has a sense of humour and can laugh at himself just a little, an asset I always find attractive! There is a wonderful scene of Rudo – and Bernal is not the tallest guy in movies – pants around his ankles having sex in his kitchen with his leggy girlfriend who is built like a giraffe. There aren't many actors willing to make themselves look that undignified, but it's a priceless attribute! Cursi meanwhile, is being outshone by his wife Tona (Adriana Paz) who has taken advantage of his migration to the city to launch her own career. But unable to escape his gambling, he falls into the clutches of creditors.

It's an interesting but fairly superficial look at a culture where soccer is a cut throat game to be won at all costs, a way of life and an escape from poverty, as well as a game of skill and beauty. As a pairing of Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna, I much preferred Y tu Mama Tambien, which I felt was a film with much more substance. But Rudo y Cursi whiled away a not unpleasant two hours on a Friday evening. Rent it if you missed it in theatres.

This is a story about poor banana workers from central Mexico whose sudden success is illusory and whose lives go down hill, and it's played as a comedy. Carlos, in his directorial debut, is the brother of Alfonso Cuarón and the author of 'Y tu mamá también,' which Alfonso directed. This brings back together childhood friends and 'Y tu mamá' stars Diego Luna (who's Tato, nicknamed Rudo, or "rough") and Gael García Bernal (who's Beto, nicknamed Cursi, or "mushy," as in sentimental).

'Rudo y Cursi' takes some care in the reading. Look at that often-reproduced snapshot of Gael, Carlos, and Diego lighting up. Gael with his head in a bandanna, Carlos in the funny hat, tousled-haired Diego with the sly grin. These are cool guys. And the actors, in the Latino world, are hotties. That is a lens through which to view what is a decidedly unglamorous film, that sometimes seems to be making fun of poor Mexicans, and often looks like a B-picture. The country world is mostly shot darkly, through blue filters, and the actors aren't highlighted but made boys nearly lost in a crowd scene, Breugel-style. They are also buffoonish, and pathetic.

Tato and Beto are doing their thing in hicksville, Provincia Guerrero, when along comes Batuta (Guillermo Francella), a talent scout. For music or sport? He claims to both, but he's a double-talker. He's only there because the tire on his red convertible goes flat and he lacks a spare. So he watches a game of "futbol" and sees the two brothers, for they are brothers, though Beto is short and pretty and Tato is tall and thin with a little mustache and a sneer.

Though they're not young (in real life the actors are now 30 and 31) they're good players and Batuta picks one, only one, to take back to Mexico City. He stages a goal shot, since Tato is an 'arquero,' a goalie, to decide who gets to go, and they cheat, but the cheating goes wrong, a sequence that will be repeated later. This movie, like 'Amores perros,' which also starred Garcia Bernal, swarms with spicy obscenities whose picante flavor a gringo can only guess at, and with cheating, and stupidity, which also a gringo may misconstrue as pathetic when they're meant to be droll. Beto gets picked first but later Batuta comes back and brings Tato to Mexico City too, repeating all the same clichés. Batuta also speaks intentionally trite, mock-philosophical voice-over lines, pretending to know all about the world, about sport, and about women, none of which he's all that good at, because he's basically a loser too, eventually reduced to a VW bug. But everybody survives, and though Rudo and Cursi return to the provinces in disgrace, loaded with debts after a brief round of national fame, thanks to a local drug lord's marrying into the family their mother gets the nice house by the beach she dreamed of and the debts, presumably, get paid off.

Everybody admits they're essentially losers, and of humble origin. Batuta got called that, (conductor's) baton, because when he was attempting to be a soccer player himself his teammates on the street thought he was so bad maybe he could have done better as an orchestra leader. Likewise the fancy, sexy TV lady, Maya (Jessica Mas), seemingly inaccessible for Beto, till he becomes a soccer star and she suddenly notices him. He wastes money on her and then finds out she's dumped him when he sees her on a TV show cuddling with another soccer player. Tato is a jealous husband with serious anger management problems and a gambling habit exponentially worsened by a discovered weakness for cocaine. He has only lost the electric blender when he sneaks off and leaves his wife and kid in the country, but he manages to gamble away a mountain of cash he doesn't have in Mexico City.

Beto's particular idiocy is that he thinks he must be a singer. He warbles out of tune and pumps an accordion but despite a small contract and a video arranged by Batuta of him singing Cheap Trick's "I Want You to Want Me" in Spanish, all he can get is an appearance at a small circus.

This movie might make a whole lot more sense if you are Mexican. It was a little bit lost on me, though I can't say I minded the fact there's a minimum of "futbol" depicted on screen. This is a film about Mexico's national delusions and its contradictions, beautifully exemplified by the two thugs who threaten to kill Beto if he doesn't turn around his losing streak, and then ask him for autographs for their daughters. One revelation is that while Garcia Bernal is charismatic and the New Yorker once called him "impossibly handsome," Diego Luna is more convincing and more embedded in his role and seems the truer actor. As the "rough" Rudo, he's utterly different from the soft, aristocratic Tenoch of 'Y tu mamá también.' He's hard, abrupt, almost scary here. Carlos Cuarón seems to know what he's doing even if I don't; we should give him a chance to do more. 'Y tu mamá' was the more conventionally artistic film, more successfully designed to play to the global audience. But these three hip Mexican guys deserve credit for turning inward and doing something for the home audience. It sounds to my untutored ear as though despite their exploits in Hollywood and beyond, Gael and Diego can still spout the spicy Mexican vernacular as fluently as ever. I wish I were a little more in on the joke.