Rudo y Cursi

Energetic fun, Rudo y Cursi is a multiple-brother act: It’s written and directed by Carlos Cuarón and produced by elder sibling Alfonso, director of Y Tu Mamá También, and it reunites Mamá‘s co-stars Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna, playing half-brothers to boffo effect. Nearly as popular on its home territory as the first Cuarón hit, Rudo y Cursi is a similarly manic, if less psychologically fraught, exercise in male bonding and fraternal rivalry. Rudo (Luna) and Cursi (Bernal) are a ripe pair of bumpkins — the former, irascible and inarticulate; the latter, expansive and voluble. Each is a potential soccer star, or so we’re told by the hustler, Batuta (Guillermo Francella), who, in discovering the brothers and providing the movie’s voiceover narration, more or less conducts the action. Batuta can only take the brothers with him to Mexico City one at a time; thus, we twice enjoy their miserable digs, exposure to frozen food, locker-room hazing, and heady success. The sports action runs a distant second to screwball character comedy, and the denouement is pretty downbeat. In Rudo y Cursi, the rocky road to success is just a dead end — or a big circular drive.