Reason Writers at the Movies: Peter Suderman Reviews Casa de mi Padre
Associate Editor Peter Suderman reviews Will Ferrell's absurdist send-up of Spanish language gangster films in today's Washington Times:
"Casa de mi Padre," an absurdist sendup of cheapo Spanish-language gangster melodramas, has a hall-of-mirrors weirdness to it, in which the weirdness is endlessly multiplied in all directions. Weirdness isn't a surface gloss, or an occasional indulgence. It's central to the movie's ethos.
The question, then, is whether it's funny. Oh, it's shocking. It's strange. It will make you scratch your head and rub your eyes in confusion. But will it make you laugh? That's harder to say. There are certainly grins and chuckles to be had, but the movie's weirdness is so profound, it occasionally seems designed more to provoke than entertain.