Rudo y Cursi

Year: 2009

Genres: Comedy, Drama

Directed by: Carlos Cuarón

Written by: Carlos Cuarón

Starring: Gael Garcia Bernal, Diego Luna, Guillermo Fracella

Company: Sony Pictures Classics | Runtime: 0 minutes | Rudo y Cursi on IMDB

Beto and Tato Verdusco are brothers who work at a banana plantation and also play soccer for the village team. Nicknamed Tough because of his personality and football style, Beto dreams of becoming a professional soccer player; Tatos dream is to be a famous singer, and both share the dream of building a house for their mother, Elvira. They have a change in luck when Batuta, a soccer talent scout, discovers them accidentally. Tato is the first to move to the big city where he becomes the star goal scorer for the prestigious Deportivo Amaranto. His baroque playing style earns him the nickname of Corny. Although Beto feels he has been betrayed and left behind, he soon travels to Mexico City to become the goalkeeper for Atltico Nopaleros. At the peak of glory, they forget all animosity, although it does not last long. At the very real possibility of fulfilling all of their dreams, the siblings must face an innate rivalry as well as their own demons and limitations. Beto is a gambler and allows his addiction to drag him down; Tato is unable to recognize his true talents and squanders every opportunity by pursuing a false idea of celebrity and status. The dream seems to slip through their fingers. And it is at their worst moment that the brothers find forgiveness trying to help each other while casting headlong towards their individual destiny. (Sony Classics)

Rudo y Cursi trailer

Dana Stevens

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Carlos Cuarn's screenplay is rambling and unstructured but full of vibrant dialogue. As in "Y Tu Mam Tambin," the insults the two leads hurl at one another are creatively filthy.

A.O. Scott

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While the film is lively and engaging, it also, in the end, feels a little thin, largely because it is unsure of how earnestly to treat its own lessons about fate, ambition and brotherly love.

Dan Zak

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Enjoyable but forgettable.

Joe Morgenstern

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Mr. Cuarn directs with a hand that's as sure as it is deft. The music is terrific, though I can't say the same for the fusty subtitles, and Adam Kimmel's cinematography bathes the movie's cheerful absurdities in a beautiful glow.

Steven Rea

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That the fantasy comes crashing back to earth seems all but inevitable. That Rudo y Cursi doesn't crash in the process - that's muy bien.

Scott Knopf

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What Cuarn and friends have done is made a cute genre film. What's the harm in that? Im sure Bernal will be back to his edgy roots soon enough.

Lisa Schwarzbaum

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The intimate movie hums with a back-in-the-hood vibe that gets the two stars playing contentedly, and delightfully, for the love of local filmmaking.

Kyle Smith

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An occasionally amusing but strained fable about the dangers and delights of sibling rivalry that asks us to believe (for instance) that soccer scouts roam Mexico looking for 30-year-old recruits.

J.R. Jones

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Run-of-the mill drama.

Roger Ebert

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This is not a deep movie, but it's a broad one. It reunites three talents who had an enormous hit with "Y Tu Mama Tambien": actors Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna, and Carlos Cuaron, who wrote that film and writes and directs this one. Instead of trying to top themselves with life and poignancy, they wisely do something for fun.

David Ansen

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Hilarious, satirical and melancholy, Rudo y Cursi may not go as deep as "Y Tu Mam Tambin," but it has a similar vivacity. It turns this tale of brotherly bonds and sibling rivalry--a veiled allegory of the Cuarn boys themselves?--into one of the year's most memorable offerings.

Connie Ogle

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Fierce, profane and hilarious comedy.

Ty Burr

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Rudo y Cursi is a grave and calculated affront to the men of Mexico, and that's the source of its roistering charm.

Joe Neumaier

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Luna and Bernal have amiability, but not enough to earn a recommendation for this clichd movie.

Marjorie Baumgarten

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Living up to its title, Rudo y Cursi is appealingly tough and corny but contains little that causes these elements to congeal into anything greater.

John Anderson

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Picture scores a solid goal for its national cinema and the cause of comedy.

Stephen Cole

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It's really a lazy comedy that is content telling a crude and corny Hollywood story with a Mexican accent.

Robert Abele

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Mexico has had its share of debilitating transnational news lately, but the arrival of the puckishly entertaining, fleet-of-foot drama-comedy Rudo y Cursi deserves a hearty welcome.

Shawn Levy

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It's a film that gently spoofs such cultural staples as ranchera music, illegal gambling, labor exploitation and tabloid media. And it's the sort of film that sneaks serious themes and emotions in just when you think it's about to dissolve into farce. Small but largely satisfying.

Peter Rainer

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The rags-to-riches-to-rags trajectory is shopworn, but the sibling rivalries are cantankerous and goofy and Bernal's Tato, who fancies himself a pop singing star, wouldn't make the first cut on "American Idol."

Nathan Rabin

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Carlos Cuaron's otherwise terrific new comedy Rudo Y Cursi barely survives its third-act "Goodfellas" descent into seedy coke-and-crime drama.

Duane Byrge

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Rudo y Cursi scores from every angle -- comic, personal and cross-cultural.

Claudia Puig

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Rudo y Cursi (which roughly translates to tough and corny) is more raucous and slight than the contemplative "Y Tu Mama," but it is an undeniably entertaining rags-to-riches-to-rags comedy.

Peter Travers

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Luna and Garca Bernal display the kind of chemistry that makes you overlook the clichs in the script by first-time director Carlos Cuarn. Sometimes good-natured fun is enough.

J. Hoberman

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Rudo y Cursi is as fatalistic as any film noir, but it's played for cartoonish screwball comedy. At once smooth and frantic, filled with cozy clutter and vulgar jive, the movie subsumes its moralizing in frat-house entertainment.