| You’ve Got This is a Mexican romantic dramedy. The production value is high, filled with some nicely photographed locales. The emotion in the romantic drama aspect is earned as the film gets deeper. However, apart from a few funny lines, the humour was mostly filled with immature contrivances, and despite some solid effort from the actors, the characters are mostly one-dimensional. | | 2020
Directed by: Salvador Espinosa
Screenplay by: Tiare Scanda, Leonardo Zimbron
Starring: Tato Alexander, Moises Arizmendi
|
The main character is Alejandro, a handsome, successful man in a steady relationship and obsessed with exactly one thing. He wants a baby. He goes on and on to his girlfriend -- who has unequivocally stated over and over again that she doesn’t want a child – that women are natural mothers; that as soon as she’s pregnant, natural instincts will take over and she would be a great mother. Two obvious issues here. First, I was ready to turn the film off for the nonsense sexist beliefs, except every character calls Alejandro out. Every time he says something sexist, another character is there to explain to him that he’s being sexist. Second, he’s ignoring the fact that his girlfriend literally doesn’t want a baby and it has nothing to do with fear of being a mother; there relationship is doomed from the opening scene.
The girlfriend is Ceci, a beautiful, successful woman who is also obsessed with exactly one thing: her career. She doesn’t care that Alex wants a baby because she has an important job and obviously that’s more important. It’s hard to be on either character’s side since they are both so singularly focused.
In a twist that brings down the humour level, Alex in an attempt to be friendly towards an over-worked single mother, offers to take care of her baby. She accepts, and then just disappears. The viewer is left with humour involving two men changing a baby’s diaper, hiding a baby at an office (as the most cliché, stereotypically mean boss yells at co-workers), two male friends fighting like husband and wife over who wakes up when the baby cries, and that goes on and on.
The supporting characters are weaker actors with forced humour. The lead couple at least adds emotional depth to Alex and Ceci even when the writing isn’t there. I liked You’ve Got This a lot more once we got past the baby humour (and given a reason for the mother’s disappearance) but the writing is all over the place.
|
