Ostensibly a vehicle for Mexican comedian Omar Chaparro, the new action comedy film Compadres is one of the dopiest, most tone-deaf films I’ve seen in recent memory (and that’s coming from the guy who reviewed Dirty Grandpa). Nearly every scene has a moment at which, either via a plot twist or character beat, you think to yourself, “What the fuck were they thinking?” Director Enrique Begne has made a film that seeks to emulate the style and feel of a slick Hollywood blockbuster, but the end result feels like a drunken medley of stereotypes and tired, overused tropes smashed together, sadistically pummeling the viewer into submission.
I will say this about Compadres: There is absolutely no shortage of plot. Chaparro plays Garza, a Mexican cop who (sigh) doesn’t play by the rules, and is looking to bust a gangster named Santos (Elias). Ignoring pleas from his family-man partner to wait for backup (double sigh), Garza storms a warehouse to capture Santos, getting his partner killed. Three months later, Garza’s new girlfriend Maria (Derbez) is kidnapped by Santos’ thugs, and Garza must help Santos escape custody for her return. After he complies, Santos shoots him and Garza is captured and sent to prison, a disgrace to the police force. He escapes custody with the help of his boss to search for Santos, his girlfriend, and a bunch of money that was stolen by Santos from another gangster named Gaspar (Cosio). That is, literally, the first 20 minutes. Garza then teams up with American teen Vic (Morgan), a shy hacker embroiled in the theft, and the two set off to save Maria, retrieve the stolen money, and learn some life lessons along the way.
From the ill-chosen music cues and overreliance on lowest-common-denominator fart jokes to the supremely annoying editing choice of constantly revisiting a scene to show what the viewer has “missed,” and the fact that every single female character sports a push-up bra, I can only deduce that Compadres was conceived by a focus group of 13-year-old boys who were force-fed Adderall before being asked what their favorite movie scenes were, the resulting transcript printed as a screenplay, and filmed verbatim. Compadres feels less like an actual movie and more like a half-dozen movies thrown together, and absolutely nothing sticks.
This article appears in April 22 • 2016.