Família, Pero No Mucho 2025 Movie Review
Brazilian bar owner Otávio struggles to let go of his daughter Mari after the loss of his wife. Three years after studying abroad, she announces that she wants to get married. Not just anyone, but an Argentinian. When Mari invites Otávio to stay with her in-laws in the Argentinian mountains, a comical spectacle in the snow ensues. The humor isn’t very impressive and the story is more than predictable, but Família, Pero No Mucho entertains in other respects.
The plot, of course, is nothing new. It seems like a comedy like this one pops up on Netflix every week. The budget is moderate to low, storylines are endlessly recycled, and every protagonist is played in the same childish and overly outspoken way. Otávio is exactly the same: charmless and irritating. Fortunately, this seems a conscious choice by the filmmakers, who otherwise did a good job.
The lighting in Família, Pero No Mucho, in particular , is impressively skillfully executed. However, this could also be due to the fact that low-budget films are usually the first to skimp on technical aspects. In our flat country, we also find the mountains of Limburg impressive, even though they are, of course, only small hills in the context of the Alps.
Still, the lighting sometimes plays nicely with shadows and color, and there are a few beautiful shots, especially at the beginning. The setting in the Argentinian mountains also occasionally produces beautiful images. Compositionally, most of the film’s images are not very interesting, but they are still beautiful to look at thanks to the mountains in the background.
It’s amusing how the tension between Otávio and his father-in-law, Héctor, isn’t just about putting on a show for the married couple, but also about the rivalry between Brazil and Argentina. Naturally, this makes a game of foosball highly charged, but this clash also resurfaces in more subtle ways. For example, the difference in language and certain vocabulary between Argentinian Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese is fully utilized.
This leads to misunderstandings and a refreshing sense of humor. This doesn’t always translate well in the subtitles, as they leave the confusing Spanish word untranslated. As a result, the joke that the word means something completely different in Portuguese doesn’t always work so well. The fact that the scene is funny, however, is due to that damned, over-the-top acting style of characters in Netflix comedies. It turns out that normally irritating way of offering “entertainment” is actually good for something after all.
