Casa de mi Padre

I remember the reviews for this not being encouraging, but it's barely 80 minutes long, so if it was bad, at least it's short.

Will Ferrell tries to do a spoof of a Spanish or Mexican drama. He plays the son of a rancher. His brother is involved in a drug war with a rival, and Armando doesn't know what to do. The rival has the Mexican police in his pocket, and the DEA just wants the gangs to kill each other. Hey, why should Americans have all the fun killing each other?

The movie does a lot of gags playing up the idea of having a limited budget. Really obvious stuffed animals or mannequins used in place of live ones. Obvious continuity errors from one moment to the next. A moment where the movie pauses to explain that they can't show the scene they were about to because it was illegal and ill-advised in a lot of ways.

Oh, I wasn't supposed to tell you that. Well, they said don't tell my friends, but you guys are my readers. Totally different, right?

I didn't laugh very much. Maybe I don't know enough about what it's spoofing to get some of the jokes, but I think for it to work it still needs to hold together as a story, on a basic level. Airplane and Black Dynamite spoof genres too, but they put a lot more effort into it than this does. Plus, this leans really heavily on Will Ferrell playing his usual clueless manchild. There isn't really a second funny co-star or supporting actor to help carry the load. So if Ferrell's stuff isn't landing, the movie has nothing else to fall back on.