Carlos Cuarón's Rudo y Cursi arrives with an impressive pedigree, boasting all three celebrated amigos of the New Mexican Cinema -- big brother Alfonso Cuarón, Alejandro González Iñárritu, and Guillermo del Toro -- as its producers. But a funny thing happens on the way to the estadio de fútbol: the sibling rivalry fable starts to feel like a Mexicanized take on Will Ferrell movie. And that's not exactly a compliment.
Rudo y Cursi reunites lifelong friends Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna for the first time since being launched to international stardom on the back of Y tu mamá también, which Carlos co-wrote. It's a big screen telenovela that glides along breezily, just skimming the surface of plausibility but never quite making much of a lasting impression. It's frequently funny, though, and much of the credit for what works here goes to the enormously talented two stars, whose chemistry you just can't fake.
They play impoverished half-brothers and banana plantation workers Tato (Bernal) and Beto (Luna). Tato spends his days singing -- terribly -- and dreams of moving to Texas and making it big as a pop star, while the more pragmatic Beto realizes field foreman is about as far as he's going to go in life. Both, however, excel at soccer, and are soon plucked out of their dead-end existences by an oily, Corvette-driving scout, played by Argentinian film star Guillermo Francella. (In one of the film's crucial missteps, he also acts as the film's narrator, weighing it down with dismal platitudes about sport, war, and fidelity.)
Before long, their wildest sports star fantasies come true. Tato quickly becomes the league's best scorer and a tabloid sensation, dubbed Cursi (corny or tacky) for his cheesy antics on and off the pitch. Beto, meanwhile, has a harder time breaking through, but eventually he too rises up the ranks to become a formidable goaltender. Tato hooks up with a shallow TV star, Beto gets lost in a gambling habit, they both lose everything, and eventually face off in a championship game before a rapt nation. You've seen this kind of scene a million times before -- usually with John C. Reilly and Ferrell chewing each other in front of a packed stadium -- and something about it feels reverse-engineered here, as if they anticipated the Hollywood adaptation before even conceiving the original. Cuarón only emphasizes that with his odd choice not to focus on the beauty of the sport; he literally turns the camera away from the action on the field.
Like the one memento from home hanging above the mantle in Tato's expensive new villa, Rudo y Cursi is sort of a velvet painting to Y tu mamá también's mural -- campily enjoyable on a surface level, but lacking in the vivid colors, details, and breadth that make you feel as if you're glimpsing something truly significant. It doesn't do its stars justice, but they make it a worthwhile match nonetheless. Rating (out of 10): 6.5