I love this movie so much

One of my all time favorites.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Two siblings rival each other inside the world of professional soccer.This film is marketed as being from the creators of "Y Tu Mama Tambien", which is not only true but very wise marketing. But let us not be fooled, this film is not on the same level, even if it looks just as good and has the same folks involved.Aspects of it are quite good, and the Cheap trick karaoke is fairly amusing. But this rivalry of two soccer players is not very compelling. In "Mama", there was another rivalry between two young men, but that seemed more powerful. This is a situation where we feel no need to care about one or the other.

In 2001, Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna starred in Y tu mama tambien, a film I would place in the top ten for this decade. Their dynamic on screen was palpable. The combination of a their performances as well as a gripping story from the Cuaron brothers, Carlos and Alfonso. Alfonso directed the film and went on to direct Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Children of Men, the latter being a gem. Now, Carlos has taken the reigns as director for his first feature with Rudo y Cursi.He reuintes with his Y tu mama stars Bernal and Luna, who have had stellar careers since 2001. Here they play brothers in a small Mexican town who dream of one day leaving and making it big. Beto (Luna) wants to become the greatest goalie in the country while Tato (Bernal) wants to be a singer, but can play soccer better than he can sing. They are discovered by Batuta (Guillermo Francella) during one of their games and offers one of them the chance of a life time: to become a professional football player. The scene to decide who gets to go is one of the best in the film, so I won't ruin it.The majority of the film centers on the two brothers trying to fulfill their dreams but struggling along the way with gambling, women, and the sport they love. What I love so much about this film are the characters of Beto and Tato. They are so developed. You can tell exactly what their life has been life without knowing too much about them. They are simple folk and talk as such, regardless of how rich or destitute they become. Cuaron makes this unbelievable story as believable as possible, throwing the characters curveballs, much as life does.Luna and Bernal work so well together. They look nothing alike yet I believe that they are brothers here. There is a scene where Luna is very upset with his brother and venting about it to his wife, but when she chimes in and talks down about Bernal, Luna tells her not to speak about his brother like that. It's the little things that they do that give their characters depth and feeling.Cuaron uses narration throughout the course of the film, much like he did with Alfonso in Y tu mama tambien. This narrator however has an identity (Batuta) while in the other film it is anonymous. I think I would have liked it better that way or simply done without. The anonymous narrator can bring some interesting details and histories to the story, almost like watching a documentary. This narrating is bias and doesn't get quite as personal. It could have been dealt with in a better manner.Although Carlos has been involved with several movies, I was very impressed with his directorial debut. Some people are born screenwriters, but step behind the camera and things fall apart. Luckily for us Carlos is multi talented like his brother. There are some very nice scenes here with solid camera work. One particular shot of the two brothers sitting across from each other at a table was beautiful in my opinion.After the film was over and the credits began to roll, I happened to notice the names under the "Produced by" title. They were Alfonso Cuaron, Alejandoro Gonzalez Inarritu, and Guillermo Del Toro. They recently made a production company called Cha Cha Cha films. These three filmmakers won world wide acclaim in 2006 when they each released brilliant pieces of cinema. Cuaron with Children of Men, Inarritu with Babel, and Del Toro with Pan's Labyrinth. A pretty impressive threesome to have on your film's credits. I was impressed.Rudo y Cursi is a very satisfying film for those who aren't looking for a typical story. Some might get mad at the ending but that's understandable. Such is life. Not everybody can be happy. I guess that's the film's underlying message that if you accept what life has dealt you, happiness will come to you.

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.

"Rudo y Cursi" is about two brothers that are plucked from obscurity in a small village in Mexico to play professional soccer. One is a striker and the other is a goalie. But drop any notion that this story has much to do with the actual sport of soccer. It's much more about success and what this does to people. And even in that regard its fairly clichéd -- one brother gets a sexy girlfriend who makes him buy cars for her and the other brother gambles his money away. By the end of the story their money is gone and they aren't even any wiser. So what's the point? Rudo y Cursi is obscene and cynical, frantic, funny and somehow disturbing. Lots of loud music and quick cutting and jittery camera work. There are some great performances in it and the locations are outstanding. It captures the look, feel and smell of Mexico. But you walk out thinking the world is a rotten place and people are pretty horrible.