Casa de mi Padre

   I am happy to see Will Ferrell and his comedy team produce something truly original once again.  Casa de mi Padre was written by Andrew Steele and directed by Matt Piedmont, who have both been creatively involved with SNL and the website, Funny or Die.  This is a film that takes meta to a whole new level.  It pokes so much fun at itself, it almost makes you feel bad that the film is hurting its own feelings.  99.9% of the film's dialogue is in Spanish, or what I thought sounded a lot like Spanish.  I get the feeling that Ferrell's version of the language was a loose interpretation, but I can't be sure.  Ferrell plays Armando Alvarez, a dim-witted Mexican rancher, whose drug-dealing brother is set to marry a beautiful woman named Sofia.  He instantly falls in love with her and battles to save her from violent Mexican drug lords.  There isn't much more of a plot than that, so I won't even bother.  What this film lacks in story, it makes up for in satirical style, creativity and uniqueness.  It is going to gain its fans - and I do feel that it will develop a cult following - because of the hilariously cheap and sloppy style by which it was produced.  I feel that this movie will not make much money in the U.S., but due to its incredibly low budget, it will be a huge financial hit.  Because it is primarily in a foreign language, its popularity will not come close to Ferrell's previous hits like Anchorman and Talladega Nights, but it is unfair to make comparisons to any of his other films since this one is so different from anything he's ever done. 
  There are plenty of guns, cigarettes, stuffed cats, mannequins, fake sets and green screens.  The first 30 minutes of this movie were filled with these shockingly funny gags.  These same gags got a bit tired in the second and third acts but there were just enough laughs to keep me interested until the end - particularly when the movie paused for the 2nd Assistant Cameraman to insert an on-screen note apologizing for the shamefully poor production quality of a fight scene between a lion and a coyote.
    The laughs, while rarely gut-busting, are the type that cause you to shake your head at the set designers' lack of interest in making backgrounds look real or the editors' indifference to cinematic continuity.  Bottom line is, this movie plays like a feature-length sketch, so if you liked SNL from the mid 1990s up until about 5 years ago, it will probably bring you quite a few laughs.