Recien Cazado

Jessie Savini
Review 2
Recien Cazado: 2009. Genre: Drama. Director: Rene Bueno. Writer: Rene Bueno. Cast: Babriella Vergara, Jaime Camil, Otto Sirgo, Angelica Aragon, Ruben Zamora, Magi Avila, Khristian Clausen . Running time: 109 minutes.

I wanted to see Recien Cazado because I was curious as to what comedies in other cultures and languages are like. I wanted to know if they were different than comedies that I usually see, or if they were similar to American comedies. I quickly found out that this one at least was very different than movies that I usually watch. I do not know if it was just a poor example of Spanish comedy, but it was absolutely terrible. And when I say terrible, I mean it was so bad that I wanted to walk out of the movie many times. The jokes were corny and just a little bit too raunchy. The plot did not make sense, and the actors reminded me of soap opera actors – they were overdramatic and mediocre at best. To be fair, though, I will say that there were a few people in the movie theatre that laughed at the jokes and seemed to enjoy the movie. This actually leads me to believe that the story of the movie simply did not transcend the cultural barrier (maybe the language did not translate well, or maybe I was not able to appreciate their humor) but either way, I did not enjoy it.
This storyline of Recien Cazado closely resembles What Happens in Vegas, which is an American romantic comedy about two people meeting in Vegas and getting married during a night full of drunken mistakes. Starring Ashton Kurtcher and Brittany Murphy, this movie premiered in 2008 and was much better than its Spanish counterpart. That being said, as I begin to think of what to write about the plot of this movie, I can’t seem to think of anything to write. The storyline of Recien Cazado consisted of many small trivial stories put together that kind of come together to form the larger story of a man and a woman falling in love. It seemed to me that they did not want the movie to be predictable, so they threw in small subplots to try to throw the audience off. It didn’t work. Instead, the audience is left wondering how this pertains to the story, and the movie is still extremely predictable. Basically, the main plot of Recien Cazado tells the same story of a man and a woman who drunkenly get married the first night they meet. The next day, the man does not remember a thing from the night before and wakes up to find a marriage certificate on his bedside table. Upon seeing this, he freaks out, wakes his new “wife” up, and says he wants to get a divorce. The woman does remember the events from the previous night, though, and decides she wants to wait to get a divorce until after she gets her period - to make sure she is not pregnant from the night before. Sounds a little bit ridiculous, right? She begs him to wait until she gets her period in three weeks, and he eventually agrees.
The rest of the movie is about their new marital lifestyle, and the problems that come with being “married” in this strange relationship. They can’t stand each other; the two main characters fight throughout the entire movie, yelling loud in Spanish and even throwing things at each other during one scene. The husband, a suave playboy who previously brought home different ladies from the bar every night, is sexually frustrated and angry that his wife will not let him go out with other girls. Through all the fighting and yelling, they realize that they actually do have a connection and there is chemistry between them. To be honest, the story implies there was supposed to be chemistry between the characters, but the actors completely lacked any amount of chemistry on screen. After two weeks of living together, the woman’s ex-lover comes back into her life and asks her to marry him on a whim. It was at this point that she realizes that she is in love with her “husband” and does not want to be with any other man.
There is an unexpected twist at the end; the marriage was a hoax. The man’s mom hired the woman to marry him because she wanted to teach her son a lesson and distract him from his “playboy” ways, which eventually worked. After spending a few miserable weeks without each other, the two realize that they cannot live without each other and reunite as lovers in the last scene of the film.
In my opinion, forty-five minutes of the movie could have been cut out and the film would have been much better. All of the fluff and insignificant subplots deterred from the main story in the movie in a negative way, and harmed the overall effect of the movie. Also, I think the main actress was terrible and the casting director could have found someone different for that role who actually knew how to act. Her main role in the movie was to act like a tease and tempt her husband, which she correctly did by never wearing much of anything. There were scenes in the movie when they would be sitting around eating dinner, and for some reason she was eating dinner in a bra and underwear or lingerie. It did not seem to make sense at all; the lack of clothes just left me wondering why she would not just put some clothes on because I had to see it for an hour and forty minutes and just agitated me for some reason because it would not happen in real life.
I was very disappointed in this movie. The idea of the movie was good; it could have been a fun romantic comedy to lighten my day and make me smile after seeing several depressing movies. But it did nothing of the sort. It pissed me off, and I wish I had left because the movie took two hours of my life that I will never get back. I guess I should not be surprised that it was so terrible with the storyline that it had, but the film was still a letdown.