Film

There are three reasons—and three reasons alone—why Carlos Cuarón’s Mexican soccer comedy is being released theatrically in America: Gael García Bernal, Diego Luna and Y Tu Mamá También. You keep rooting for this reunion of Mama’s stars to tap into the charisma of that frenzied road-trip movie (cowritten by this director), but whereas the earlier Mexican film brought its characters to a painful emotional brink, this satirical tale—so slight it’s hard to even hate it—is too worried about being liked.

Banana-farming brothers Tato (Bernal) and Beto (Luna) are recruited by a major-league soccer scout (Francella). Beto, dubbed “Rudo” (rough) by his teammates, gambles his money away; Tato is nicknamed “Cursi” (prissy) and blows it all on a hot model girlfriend and an ill-advised foray into pop music. (He rents out a circus tent, throwing his own one-song concert to an audience of yawning locals.) These poor, mama-worshipping country boys struggle to play the parts of the ultrarich, leaving loved ones in the lurch as they lounge in luxury; if Rudo y Cursi had been willing to step away from the fútbol fields—and sports-film clichés—to embrace this irony, it might have found the guts to take on a bigger goal.