Y Tu Mama Tambien (R-rated Edition)

Rating:
Summary: Garbage
Review: I thought this film was garbage. The only thing good about this film was seeing Mexico's beautiful countryside and beaches. Don't waste your money!

Rating:
Summary: Good for Everyone, Except Your Parents
Review: I was really surprised by Y Tu Mama Tambien. I thought it was going to be more about sex than anything else and not have a coherent plot. I was wrong and I actually really liked this movie.
It tracks a vacation to the beach of two friends, Julio and Tenoch. They bring with them the sexy and older Luisa, whom they both eventually have sex with. However, this movie is about more than just a sex-filled trip with adolescents. Its about the changing friendship of Julio and Tenoch as they go different directions.
I highly recommend this movie to anyone with an open mind and a love of Spanish language movies. You probably shouldn't watch it with your parents or any other disapproving relatives because there is a lot of sex. Enjoy the incredibly sexy Gael Garcia Bernal because he really is the best part of the movie.

Rating:
Summary: A Journey to Heaven's Mouth
Review: This Spanish language film (with English subtitles) has a coarse charm that goes a long way to garnering fans. Two teenage boys, Tenoch (Diego Luna) and Julio (Gael Garcia Bernal), are adrift when their girlfriends leave for an Italian vacation. They smoke pot, talk sex, scheme, talk sex. When they meet Luisa the willowy wife of Tenoch's cousin, they cannot believe their good fortune - especially because she agrees to accompany them on a trip to an isolated, gorgeous beach called Heaven's Mouth. No matter that they made up Heaven's Mouth to impress her; they are going. Their journey creates a bond among the three, not only sexually but emotionally, that we know will always be a part of them. In several graphic scenes that stop short of hard-core porn, the characters discover that sex is both everything and not everything.

The film's stamp of individuality is the witty, deadpan narration. Strangely, the scenes stop for a second or two, frozen and completely silent, before the voice-over begins. This roughness of editing actually adds to the film's charm by avoiding the slickness many of us are used to seeing in Hollywood films. Gritty background shots of Mexico add context to these spoiled boys' adventure - and hint to the underlying reality of Luisa's motivation. (Astute viewers will know right away what motivates her, but this knowledge only adds to the poignancy.) Although this is often dubbed a "coming of age film", I never got the impression that the boys grew up until long after their experiences. To them, it was a lark and a test of their friendship; only later, when they have already grown apart, do they see what it all meant.

Perhaps because everything in this movie anticipates sex, I found that it was missing the depth I expect of acclaimed films. Despite this, it was an enjoyable on-the-road story, with disarming and very natural acting. Recommended for adults only.

Rating:
Summary: missed opportunity
Review: bit of a dissapointment, this one. i was expecting great things but got a story which is too silly to be realistic and not symbolic enough to be abstract. beautiful camera work, though. and sex scenes are both hot and funny. nicely embedded social comments, too. all in all, sort of a missed opportunity. 3 stars.

Rating:
Summary: surprisingly very good
Review: I rented this movie because I am trying to learn Spanish, and I wanted to see some movies that had Spanish dialogue. I was very surprised that it turned out to be a very good movie. I enjoyed it so much, I came to amazon.com to buy it, and then decided to write a review.

Rating:
Summary: So very real, except for the sex
Review: Yet another coming of age movie which uses sex as the main catalyst and barometer for growth. Once again, the sex here is sanitized. Some bad feelings to be sure, and yet, a fantasy land of no venereal disease, no AIDS, no pregnancy, and no abortion. The story, with all its explicitness, is empty and ultimately very separated from reality.

Rating:
Summary: Sweet
Review: Great movie, rather intense ending,but still great movie. If your attention span can handle watching the movie while reading subtitles and blocking out the spanish dialouge, this movie is for you.

Rating:
Summary: Don't quite get it...
Review: Wow, this is like one of those magic-eye things they used to have when I was a kid. Everyone else was telling me they could really see the 3-D sailboat and it was so cool, and I was just staring at a bunch of fuzz. I've read all of the hype about Y Tu Mama Tambien, and all the reviews from people who think it's the greatest movie ever made, so all I can say is that I must be missing something. I watched it twice and I thought it was ok, I have to say that by the second viewing I was bored and kind of drifted off. It seemed like the boys were trying too hard to show how very, very adolescent they were (by fart joke number five you want to yell at your screen "Ok, we GET it, you're supposed to be typical raunchy teens"). Maybe the deep symbolism was beyond me, from looking at these reviews I see that many people think the "real" story was in the fact that everything in the movie was really supposed to represent something else. If I see a movie about two boys going to a beach then I tend to assume it's about two boys going to the beach, not a symbolic voyage through the sea of sexuality around the waterfall of manhood while walking the plank of class division, or whatever. I'm not saying that this makes it a good or bad movie, it's all about personal preference. Unfortunately all of the symbolism was wasted on me. For me, the movie was either too uneventful or so abstract that I couldn't relate to it (depending on your interpretation, I guess).