Santos Peregrinos (2004)

This film receives a lot of bad reviews, "Santo Peregrinos" is the Mexican remake of the Spanish "La Comunidad" directed by Alex de la Iglesia which had good reviews. Great actors and good characters in a not so great film, kind of watching a Looney Tunes cartoon for adults. Carmen Salinas, Ernesto Gomez Cruz, Isaura Espinoza and Julieta Egurrola are great actors, but somehow they doesn't give it all. Eduardo España in a character a lot like Marty Feldman's Igor in "Young Frankenstein" is very funny, unlike his coleague Adal Ramones the least funny of all. But wait, this is not a total crap, if you loose all your expectations before seen it, you might have some fun. Then again, better go for "La Comunidad".

Most of the people who pays a ticket for this thinks that a movie with the so-called famous Adal Ramones should be good, or at least funny. Well, this isn't.Here we have a good cast (not a dream team at all but very close to it) and a very good beginning (where you can think: "Hey, this looks cool, I think I'm gonna have a good time here!"). But after the first fifteen minutes (AND HERE COMES THE SPOILER!), just after Ernesto Gómez Cruz dies and the plot is discovered, this movie is just going one way: DOWN. Yeah, they tell what is this movie about when they showed the trailer but they don't tell you that this is that derivative, that frustrating and that they don't deliver the fun they promised.This one, a movie that belongs to the "jodidismo" genre according to Monsivais, doesn't lead to anywhere. The characters are less than flat, overexploiting the Burron Family comic style (and sorry to name this masterpiece in a comment of crap). Come on, the infallible Carmen Salinas doesn't hits the bullseye at all! And Eduardo España had the best role of the movie without talking a single word in the whole movie...The rest is misery, curse words, sex, the same as always. When this finished I've got the same felling: Mexican movies like this still don't give that little big jump to the big leagues of the worldwide cinema. Why does the people outside the Mexico city should care about this, not mentioning the people outside this country?If you want to see a bunch of people running after a valuable thing like a looney tunes cartoon and have some laughs at it, you better rent a masterpiece like El Chanfle by Chespirito.If you want to see a bunch of neighbors figuring out a good way to save (or destroy) the place where they live, look for La Estrategia del Caracol.If you want to see "vecindad" picardy in Christmas, then you have a whole list to choose from: Lagunilla Mi Barrio 2(the one in which Manolo Fabregas wears a Santa Claus suit at the end), El Rey de la Vecindad with Pedro Weber Chatanuga, or even Cantinflas's Un Quijote sin Mancha.Either way you'll be more satisfied than watching such a waste of time like this.