I saw “Un Gallo Con Muchos Huevos” (with my sister Sherry pushing my wheelchair, as usual) at the Burbank Center’s big AMC 16 theater, not a Hispanic neighborhood theater. It was better attended than we usually see, but still pretty sparse.
We enjoyed it. The plot wasn’t original, but (spoiler alert!) I appreciated that the rooster whom Toto fights turned out to be an honorable adversary, rather than another childhood-hero-who-turns-out-to-be-a-villain, as in “Up”, “Turbo”. “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2”, etc. Yes, there was a definite feeling of not getting some of the Mexican ingroup references, but there were enough U.S. cinematic references – George Lucas, the Godfather trilogy, “Rocky”, Ahnold etc. -- to keep the movie enjoyable. My main objection was a personal one; this movie makes cockfighting look so pleasant and bloodless compared to the reality. But considering that it's a family fantasy-comedy, it's probably irrelevant to criticize it for whitewashing cockfighting.
I saw “Un Gallo Con Muchos Huevos” (with my sister Sherry pushing my wheelchair, as usual) at the Burbank Center’s big AMC 16 theater, not a Hispanic neighborhood theater. It was better attended than we usually see, but still pretty sparse.
We enjoyed it. The plot wasn’t original, but (spoiler alert!) I appreciated that the rooster whom Toto fights turned out to be an honorable adversary, rather than another childhood-hero-who-turns-out-to-be-a-villain, as in “Up”, “Turbo”. “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2”, etc. Yes, there was a definite feeling of not getting some of the Mexican ingroup references, but there were enough U.S. cinematic references – George Lucas, the Godfather trilogy, “Rocky”, Ahnold etc. -- to keep the movie enjoyable. My main objection was a personal one; this movie makes cockfighting look so pleasant and bloodless compared to the reality. But considering that it's a family fantasy-comedy, it's probably irrelevant to criticize it for whitewashing cockfighting.
Fred Patten