Entertainment Magazine
The inept son (Will Ferrell) of a Mexican rancher becomes entangled with a local crime lord (Gael Garcia Bernal) when his ne'er do well brother (Diego Luna) enters into the barbarous man's debt. What may have seemed like an amusing idea in conception, having Ferrell genuinely injected into a Spanish language, quasi low budget film, results in a paper thin, one-joke 4 minute SNL sketch, laughless at that, stretched out to feature length. This film along with "The Campaign", his other feature release from last year, finally made me jump on the bandwagon and admit that I've grown tired of Ferrell's antics (though he, along with Kristin Wiig, was a sole moment of comic relief at the Globes last night). Although "Casa de mi padre" is not a good example of his overdone film persona, it is an instance of him running an idea into the ground, no matter how confounded and unfunny it may be.