Delayed Reaction: Y Tu Mama Tambien

The Pitch: A road trip movie with a lot of sex and sophomoric humor that's made like an art film, so you can like it without people judging you.

Two teenage boys and an older woman take a road trip to a beach.

I just did a Google search: "Famous Mexican actors". The top result, not surprisingly, was Salma Hayek. However, the first two living male actors that came up were Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna. I like to look at that as a reminder that sometimes casting is the most important part of a movie. I know that Alfonso Cuaron didn't pick Bernal and Luna from obscurity - Luna had a healthy number of credits already and Bernal had already starred in the Oscar-nominated Amores Perros - but they were still so young that there was no guarantee that 20 years later, they'd be the most familiar Mexican actors to an American movie fan like myself. While a lot of the credit for Y Tu Mama Tambien goes to the the multi-hyphenate, Oscar-collecting writer/director who made it, just as much belongs to Luna and Bernal for making these characters so likable. Maribel Verdu too. She does a lot of heavy lifting as the adult in the room in most scenes. Those three together have an easy chemistry that made me ignore the dumb or awful things they occasionally said.

That's not to say Cuaron played a small part in why the movie works. This is a great example of knowing how to stay out of the way. It never felt like the filmmaker was trying to drive the story. Everything more or less happens at its own pace. The best measure of a road trip movie is how long you'd be willing to hang out with these people even if nothing happens. In this case, I was sad when they finally reached that beach, because I knew it was almost over.

I didn't love everything about the movie. The voiceovers, while they added great depth to things, were a little intrusive at times. Occasionally, I'd remember how much I would hate to know Bernal and Luna's characters in real life. Something about the end, when the film announces that they never see each other again bothered me. I do like the idea of how people can fade in and out of our lives. I wished there was another way to express it that the voiceover narration. These are all small gripes though.

I'm impressed how well Luisa's sickness hid in plain sight. Early on, when she's at the doctor's office, I just assumed she received bad news then. I figured it would come up later. Then I got distracted just enjoying the road trip and forgot about it. The misdirect of her crumbling marriage to excuse her crying alone worked well, because it didn't feel like a trick, even in hindsight. And when the movie does reveal that she was sick the whole time, it wasn't shocking. It's more like everything finally clicked into place. This road trip with teenage strangers doesn't seem so random. This unlikely scenario did seem so unlikely.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend