Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Hot Watermelon Love
Even though many critics describe the film as a "road picture" but it really offers so much more. The film is very funny, warm, beautiful, honest, and sexy. The camera works are brilliant, gritty, and simply gorgeous ... how could they bring out the sublime purple in an ordinary electric fan? The acting by everyone is perfect and I don't use the P word easily. Every other scene is funny and the whole audience cracked up in laughter. I went to see the film twice here in the heart of Florida (where foreign films are not usually received well) and both screenings were sold out. The film is really that good. Many images continue to stay with me since I saw it a month ago - the two boys swimming in a leave-clogged pool, an ancient woman dancing, wild monkeys on cars, Luisa drinking coconut water, the two boys bearing the same easy-to-miss tattoo on their backs, the glistening silver dome in the maid's hometown...to name a few. Luisa is one of the most divine characters to ever grace the screen. As she dances to the jukebox music at a dying beachside cafe, you will be caught forever in her luminous gaze. Everything about her (and the film) haunts me. If you ever wonder about the meaning of life, you might find the answer in the film ... I know I did. As I left the cinema, I became a new person.
Rating: - Delightful, meaningful coming of age movie
Adult-themed movies are rarely made these days in America, the country which, ironically, is the porn capital of the world. The MPAA's rating system is confusing and often contradictory. No studio wants the dreaded 'NC-17' rating because, among other reasons, many newspapers and TV stations won't carry ads for movies so rated. To me, it's a sad, hypocritical situation. Fortunately, other countries do make movies for adults. "Y Tu Mama Tambien" is from Mexico, and, while its graphic depiction of sexual situations may seem startling to American audiences, it is far more honest, compelling and intelligent than its timid, childish American counterparts. ["American Pie" is a perfect example.]Two teenagers, Julio and Tenoch [Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna] are looking forward to the pleasures of summer. They've just graduated from high school, and their girlfriends are going off to Italy for an extended stay. After biding the girls a fond farewell, the boys set out to have as much fun as they can. At a fancy party, they meet Luisa [Maribel Verdu], the wife of Tenoch's cousin. The pair is smitten by the older woman. Impulsively, they invited her to take a road trip with them to a beach they know called Heaven's Mouth. She politely refuses. Later, when she catches her husband being unfaithful, she announces that she is ready to see the beach. [Her real reason for going is not revealed until the film's final scene.] The problem is that the guys made the beach up. Despite this technical problem, the trio sets out for the long drive to the ocean. At the end of the journey, they find a wonderful surprise. Along the way, Luisa teaches both young men how to treat a woman. They also learn other, more serious lessons about life. On the surface, this is a comedic 'road trip' movie, one of the best ever made. Beneath the surface, there lies a poignant, meaningful coming of age tale. This lively, well acted and beautifully photographed film is highly recommended for adults but not for children, for whom it was never intended. In Spanish with English subtitles.
Rating: - A teen sex movie as Chekhov might have written it.
There will never be an American film like "Y Tu Mama Tambien"--certainly not as long as the Weitz and Farrelly brothers hold sway in Hollywood. Alfonso Cuaron takes the basic plot of a Hollywood teen sex comedy--two rowdy teens take the woman of their dreams on a road trip to the beach--and makes something amazingly nuanced, powerful and moving from it. Middle-class Julio and wealthy, politically connected Tenoch are recent high-school graduates looking forward to a summer of hot sex and getting wasted. At a wedding reception, they meet Luisa, the sexy wife of Tenoch's older cousin, and spin a tall tale about Heaven's Mouth, the beautiful, secluded (and nonexistent) beach where they plan to spend their summer. Nothing more is said about this until--after receiving two very bad pieces of news--Luisa calls Tenoch and tells him she's coming with them. From then on, you get some traditional road-trip horseplay and sexual badinage, but also some things American audiences wouldn't expect, as the trip simultaneously fulfills Julio and Tenoch's brightest dreams and brings their illusions crashing down to earth. A trip that begins in youthful high spirits ends in lasting sorrow and painful self-knowledge. Throughout the movie, Cuaron has an omniscient narrator tell us facts Julio, Tenoch and Luisa never learn about each other; he also has a running commentary on characters the three pass on their way--poor and oppressed Mexicans who will never know the luxuries the protagonists take for granted. The political and class divisions of Mexico are a powerful undercurrent in this movie, adding to its sting and poignancy; the moment in which Tenoch and Julio finally turn their class resentments on each other comes unexpectedly, but inevitably. "Y Tu Mama Tambien" is extremely profane and contains loads of explicit sex--it is emphatically not for the easily offended. But in delineating the narrow lives of his three main characters, Cuaron illuminates universal truths about human nature, with a touch so sure you'd swear that Chekhov had been transplanted to 21st-Century Mexico. Maribel Verdu (Luisa), Gael Garcia Bernal (Julio) and Diego Luna (Tenoch) are superb actors as well as being extremely sexy, and one hopes that more movies starring them will make their way across the border.
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