“A Couple of Chuckles”

“Hotshots” looks at a movie!

Casa de Mi Padre is Will Ferrell’s latest comedy, and the first thing you notice is that the title is in Spanish.

The second thing you notice about the “House of My Father” is that the entire movie is in Spanish, but with English subtitles for the benefit of those of us who aren’t fluent in Spanish.

Well, not the entire movie, because there are a couple of American characters in the story, which takes place in modern-day Mexico, and they speak what the Mexican characters call “American.”

Ferrell plays Armando, the son of a rancher, and at the beginning of the movie, Armando and his two buddies, Esteban and Manuel, are moving some of the father’s cattle to a new pasture, and Armando says, “I hope nothing bad happens on the way home.”

Then they witness an execution that was caused by the nasty drug business that is going on in the country and which will have ramifications later on in the story.

When the three rancheros get home, Armando’s brother Raul shows up with his fiancee, Sonia Lopez. Raul is the son that his father always loved, and if we hadn’t already figured it out, we learn that Armando is not smart, and his father always tells him that.

Armando also has a secret that we learn when he and Sonia go out riding together and they arrive at the Pond of Seven Tears, where Armando’s mother died when Armando was a little boy.

Armando and Sonia take a liking to each other, and Sonia tells Armando that his brother Raul is in the drug business, but Raul doesn’t sell drugs to their fellow Mexicans, only to Americans.

Unfortunately, Raul is trying to do business in the territory of the most infamous drug dealer, Onza, who also has a close connection with Sonia.

Well, you can see a showdown coming up, can’t you? As well as a Mexican standoff and a final shoot-out that is all the funnier because the participants are drinking and smoking cigarettes at the same time as they are blasting away at each other.

The movie spoofs telenovelas and B-movies, production values, and anything else that Ferrell could think of while memorizing his lines phonetically.

Casa de Mi Padre has a good ending, of course, and is worth a couple of chuckles.

I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”