Ireland, United Kingdom · 2019
Rated R · 1h 38m
Director John Butler
Starring Matt Bomer, Alejandro Patiño, Elena Campbell-Martinez, Wendi McLendon-Covey
Genre Comedy, Drama
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A lonely TV weatherman strikes up an unusual friendship with a middle-aged Latino migrant worker.
Matt Bomer and Alejandro Patiño, who play the two leads, have a chemistry that brings to mind Tom McCarthy’s superior studies of seemingly disparate characters bonding against all odds, The Station Agent and The Visitor. That unlikely companionship – the heart of Butler’s film – goes a long way to make up for other lags: underdeveloped secondary characters and a few misjudged sequences that unwittingly titter on the brink of “racist.”
Los Angeles Times by Carlos Aguilar
This banally titled buddy dramedy won’t solve our critical drought of empathy or advance our social justice preoccupations, but it’s a mostly enjoyable drop in the right direction.
A shrill and insipid spectacle of cross-cultural communion, but don’t call it stupid, as that would suggest that it doesn’t know exactly what it’s doing.
Well-intentioned but at times insensitive, Papi Chulo is a complicated movie. It wants so badly to do the right thing when the situation is all wrong.
Papi Chulo is a buddy comedy, but only by its ramshackle design — it’s a forced friendship, and it’s not cute, let alone funny.
An egregiously miscalculated rent-a-companion comedy from Irish writer-director John Butler (“Handsome Devil”).
Arizona Republic by Randy Cordova
The buddy comedy Papi Chulo could go wrong in all sorts of ways, so it’s kind of a minor miracle how much it actually gets right. Funny, empathetic and tender, it pretty much sneaks up and catches you off-guard with its sly charms.
Papi Chulo eventually turns effectively…poignant.
The performances present an engaging contrast, with Bomer growing on you as you start to appreciate what’s broken in Sean, and Patiño’s deadpan shrug evolving into something more compassionate.
The New York Times by Teo Bugbee
Papi Chulo tries to subvert the conceit that casts brown people as uncomplicated support systems for conflicted white people, but lacks the vision to transform these familiar stereotypes.
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