Rudo y Cursi, possibly the funniest football movie ever made, reunites dream team Gael and Diego, those beautiful boys from Y Tu Mamá También, for raucous, unpretentious hilarity. The plot is time-honoured fish-out-of-water stuff. These hot country bumpkins – banana wetbacks in Nowhere, Mexico – are discovered by Batuta, a devilish sports agent (brilliantly essayed by Argentinian comedian Guillermo Francella) and parachuted into the upper echelons of domestic football.
Can our brothers handle things at the top? Hell, no. Beto the goalie, nicknamed Rudo (tough), a volatile creature at the best of times, succumbs to cocaine, gambling addiction and the charms ridiculously smarmy gangsters. Cursi (meaning corny), meanwhile, who dreams of a Grand Ole Opry style singing career, meets his nemesis in Maya (Jessica Mas), a smoking hot gold-digger who, according to any trade descriptions act, is more of a high-class hooker than a wag proper.
Messrs. Bernal and Luna make for a terrific dumb and dumber act. Mr. Bernal’s wide-eyed dimwit is a distant simpleton cousin for one of his butter-wouldn’t-melt psychopaths (The King, The Crimes Of Father Amaro), a loveable rube to spark off Mr. Luna’s scrunched-up mania. There may be plenty of actors out there who could play scary comic nutter, Rudo, but only Diego Luna can make it heartbreaking.
It’s not just because the script (by first-time director and brother of Alfonso, Carlos Cuarón) features some of the most imaginatively profane subtitles I have ever had the pleasure to read. It’s not even the absurd and frequent analogies between sex and football. This is that rarest of comic delights, a film that inspires rapping between friends about bits – remember the bit when Cursi gives Maya an engagement ring in a light-up, musical box? Remember when their mother tells them that the drug dealer who’s about to marry their sister is “quality”? Remember the way Batuta had a different scantily clad floozy in every scene?
It’s an absolute riot. Go see it.