Picture scores a solid goal for its national cinema and the cause of comedy.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
The New York Times by A.O. Scott
While the film is lively and engaging, it also, in the end, feels a little thin, largely because it is unsure of how earnestly to treat its own lessons about fate, ambition and brotherly love.
Rudo y Cursi (which roughly translates to tough and corny) is more raucous and slight than the contemplative "Y Tu Mama," but it is an undeniably entertaining rags-to-riches-to-rags comedy.
Rudo y Cursi is as fatalistic as any film noir, but it's played for cartoonish screwball comedy. At once smooth and frantic, filled with cozy clutter and vulgar jive, the movie subsumes its moralizing in frat-house entertainment.
Wall Street Journal by Joe Morgenstern
Mr. Cuarón directs with a hand that's as sure as it is deft. The music is terrific, though I can't say the same for the fusty subtitles, and Adam Kimmel's cinematography bathes the movie's cheerful absurdities in a beautiful glow.
Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum
The intimate movie hums with a back-in-the-hood vibe that gets the two stars playing contentedly, and delightfully, for the love of local filmmaking.
Carlos Cuaron's otherwise terrific new comedy Rudo Y Cursi barely survives its third-act "Goodfellas" descent into seedy coke-and-crime drama.
Rolling Stone by Peter Travers
Luna and García Bernal display the kind of chemistry that makes you overlook the clichés in the script by first-time director Carlos Cuarón. Sometimes good-natured fun is enough.