You know how, when you’re watching figure skating on TV, you really want to see the skaters succeed? They’re beautiful, the music is well-suited, the costumes look perfect, drama is in the air and the skating begins…and they fall. You groan because you so wanted to see perfection; to see them succeed. Then they fall again, and again, and you begin to wonder if they should be competing at this level.
It was a bit like that tonight, watching La mujer de mi hermano (My Brother’s Wife) at Festivalissimo tonight. It was a slick production with good-looking actors, nice locations, that glossy aura of well-funded filmmaking. I really wanted to like it. But — ugh. Era un poco cursi… Cursi is the closest Spanish word I can find to “cheesy” (though for fun I like to say caseoso — according to RAE it does mean “relating to cheese”, though not in the same way as our wonderful word “cheesy” in English).
Any film that makes you groan and say: “oh, come on!” at the end (not to mention at various parts throughout)…well, sorry but too much was spent on swish (if conventional) shooting and not enough on the script. Not that money solves those kinds of problems. There were some plot twists and moments of surprise (the audience gasped a few times) which were kind of satisfying, but even soap operas have those. A plot alone’s not enough for me. Too little depth to the characters and the story. Unlike last night’s great film (En la cama), I really just didn’t care about any of the characters. At all.
Laughter’s supposed to be good for your health, but I wonder how much benefit you get from semi-embarrassed groaning?