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Not quite The Further Adventures of Cain & Abel, the
second coming of Beavis & Butt-Head, or Peyton Meets
Eli, but energetic fun nonetheless, Rudo y Cursi is a
multiple brother act: It’s written and directed by Carlos Cuarón
and produced by elder sibling Alfonso, director of Y Tu Mamá
También, which Carlos co-wrote, and reunites
Mamá‘s costars Gael García Bernal and Diego
Luna, playing half-brothers to boffo effect. Nearly as popular on its
home territory as the first Cuarón hit, Rudo y Cursi is a
similarly manic, if less psychologically fraught, exercise in male
bonding and fraternal rivalry. Rudo (Luna) and Cursi (Bernal) are a
ripe pair of bumpkins—the former, irascible and inarticulate; the
latter, expansive and voluble. Each is a potential soccer star —
or so we’re told by the little hustler, Batuta (Guillermo Francella),
who, in discovering the brothers and providing the movie’s voiceover
narration, more or less conducts the action. Batuta can only take the
brothers with him to Mexico City one at a time; thus we can enjoy their
miserable digs, mind-blowing exposure to frozen food, locker room
hazing, and heady success twice. The sports action runs a distant
second to screwball character comedy, and the denouement is pretty
downbeat — at least by the grotesque standards of the
conventional North American sports movie. In Rudo y Cursi, the
rocky road to success is just a dead end — or a big circular
drive.
