Half Brothers

Comedies are usually a hard sell for me but I decided to see Half Brothers because the trailer made me laugh out loud! I saw it last night in a packed theater (by Covid-19 standards) and it was a lot of fun.  Young Renato (Ian Inigo) and his father Flavio (Juan Pablo Espinoza) are inseparable and share a love of model airplanes and figuring out puzzles.  When the value of the peso declines in Mexico, Flavio feels that he has no choice but to travel to the United States to look for work.  He never returns and Renato (Luis Gerardo Mendez) grows up to becomes a cold and bitter, albeit successful, man.  When he receives a phone call requesting that he visit his dying father in Chicago, he is angry but he begrudging decides to go to appease his fiance Pamela (Pia Watson).  He learns that he has a heretofore unknown brother named Asher (Connor Del Rio) and that his father has arranged for the two of them to complete a scavenger hunt which will explain why he never returned to Mexico. The uptight Renato is jealous that the free-spirited Asher got all of their father's attention while he had no one to rely on but himself and Asher reveals that he always felt like he was a disappointment to their father.  Through a series of misadventures, they eventually bond with each other and learn some important lessons from their father.  The plot is a bit far-fetched, there are quite a few jabs at the politics and culture of the United States, and the humor sometimes feels forced and silly (especially the physical comedy involving a goat which is amusing but comes out of nowhere) but this movie is a surprisingly poignant look at the relationship between fathers and sons.  I laughed out loud, especially in a scene where the brothers have to rescue the goat (the needle drop here is hilarious), and I had a tear in my eye by the end of the scavenger hunt.  I enjoyed this so much (and so did the crowd at my screening) but I suspect that this is because there is a dearth of new releases right now rather than because it is a great movie so keep that in mind when deciding whether to see it or not!