Padres (Spanish)

Watching this movie honestly felt like sitting through a Spanish soap opera, the way it's shot, directed, acted, and presented, all of it had that vibe. The pacing feels really off throughout. Just like a typical soap, it drags out the buildup way longer than it needs to before rushing through the payoff. And then the final act just speeds through everything with a few half baked speeches and a bunch of smiling faces, landing on a really underwhelming ending. To be fair, the film does dig into some genuinely important themes worth talking about. It's a decent reminder of how damaging prejudice can be and how much family really matters.

David and Bruno are a gay couple who've been together four years and are trying to have a baby. David's twin sister Virginia offers up her egg so they can use a surrogate along with Bruno's sperm. Her husband Miguel is furious about the whole decision, and it creates real tension within the family. A month goes by with no pregnancy and everyone assumes it didn't take, but then another month later they find out the surrogate is actually pregnant. Given how badly Miguel reacted at first, Virginia keeps the news from him entirely. Nine months later the baby arrives, the grandmother's overjoyed, and somehow, impossibly, Miguel still has no idea what's going on. Virginia and their mom both pitch in to help raise the baby, until a tragic accident kills both Virginia and Bruno. It's at the hospital that Miguel finally learns the truth about what Virginia did, and he completely cuts off his brother in law after that. A few years pass and the baby's grown into a little kid. David's now struggling to raise him solo while juggling work, and money's getting tight. He decides to approach Bruno's mother about securing the child's rightful inheritance. She'd always been against David and Bruno's relationship in the first place, and once she realizes the boy is genuinely Bruno's son, she files for custody instead. That's when Miguel finally steps back in, seeing how much David actually cares about the family and how hard he's fighting to raise his son properly, and David ends up winning the custody case. Eventually everyone reconciles and pitches in to help raise the kid, who ends up with three father figures, Bruno, David, and Miguel, plus grandparents, aunts, and cousins all around him.

Every single character in this is wildly overacted. None of the cast can cry convincingly, and their reactions are almost comically over the top, exactly the kind of thing you'd expect from a soap opera, Bruno's mother especially deserves a mention here. Everything gets played big and loud, whether it's love, jealousy, or anger. The film is loaded with over the top plot twists, dramatic showdowns between feuding family members, and staged interventions that always conveniently bring the whole family back together in the end. At one point I genuinely wondered if I was watching some chopped up version of a Spanish telenovela, but no, this was actually a feature film. The characters don't get much real depth, but in its own way the movie does touch on things like a woman's right to choose and single dads raising kids on their own. Production wise it's genuinely high end, with huge mansions, gorgeous houses, and flawless wardrobe throughout. Bruno, David, and even Miguel are all these attractive guys in their late thirties, total husband material whether you're gay or straight. The less said about side characters like Miguel's dad or David's mom, the better honestly. Sometimes even when a film's heart is in the right place, the execution just completely falls apart, and this is a pretty clear example of that happening. (4/10)