Michael's Movie Grade: A-
A hilarious comedy from Spain.
This movie is based off a simple but effective premise. An eccentric arthouse director (Penelope Cruz) decides to put two actors who would obviously have friction on the set in the same film, hoping to catch that friction in her movie. These two actors are a pretentious actor who views himself as a great artist and above common audiences who "don't understand" his art (Oscar Martínez), and an egotistical and very commercial movie star, who is most concerned with awards and living the movie star life (Antonio Banderas). Yet from this simple premise directors Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat (who also wrote this film with Gastón Duprat) create an incredibly smart and entertaining movie that also keeps us not knowing what will happen next. Of course, a comedy like this heavily depends on its stars. Luckily for us the three leads are at the top of their game here. They not only make these incredibly over the top characters somehow believable, but they are simply having so much fun making this film. I will say as much as I love both Penelope Cruz and Antonio Banderas, I have rarely seen them have this much fun before a movie camera. It is simply impossible not to get swept up into the sheer energy and fun in these performances and this guaranties that its audience will have a great time. It doesn't hurt of course that the script is incredibly funny. To do comedy as over the top as this film is always dangerous, because when it fails it can really fail. However this movie shows just how delightful over the top comedy can be when done right. I laughed out loud several times watching this film and so did the rest of the audience in the theater with me. The humor became especially daring towards the end when it took a very risky dark turn but one that worked very well.
This is simply a great movie and extremely funny.
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