Monday, April 16, 2018

Fat Drunken non-Teenage Ninja Turtles to the rescue.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my 27 years of life is that Mexicans really love their beer. Beer is like the life of the party at every wedding, children’s birthday party, baptism celebration & quinceañeras I’ve been to. Your dad drinks beer, your uncles drinks beer, your neighbors drink beer and their fathers’ fathers did as well. Good lord knows that beer is quite the elixir in Mexican culture. Sometimes I think it’s a bad thing, but overall it enriches the beloved culture—particularly with the brands from Mexico. In Mexico, a “caguama” is a turtle, but most of the time it means a fat 32 oz bottle of beer. You’d think maybe 1 or 2 is enough for the average man, but no, I’ve seen plenty of my dad’s friends in Mexico down at least 10 caguamas before sunset. That’s not a joke either.

Caguamas being very popular & important with Mexicans; inspired some filmmakers to make a corny comedy about this turtle-shaped bottle and parody Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles at the same damn time.

In Las Caguamas Ninjas, 3 old fat dudes (Pedro Weber "Chatnuga", Guillermo Rivas, Ernesto Yañez) dress up like Ninja Turtles to defend their beloved Carta Blanca beer. They also work at a Carta Blanca brewery. Naturally. Some local gangsters decide to take over the beer market in town by selling imported beer instead of the domestic stuff, thus they force local shopkeepers to sell imported only. So then, some business owners start selling imported beer and that is a big no-no for the Caguamas Ninjas and their short brewery boss (Gaston Padilla). They must save Mexican beer before it is taken over by lame imported beer!

Oh dear lord, was this movie bad. So far one of the worst movies I’ve watched this year, too. Still, I can’t put Las Caguamas Ninjas completely down considering the set of cast members that I really like star in this movie. I also loved the horrid Ninja Turtle costumes and their use of brooms instead of ninja weapons. Their “Cheers” beer t-shirts were also charming. Their fat beer guts also give their aesthetic a spark of charm as well. I also love the fight scene between our heroes and the villains. That scene had me in awe & frustration.

I think drinking 10, 11 or 13 caguamas will probably help this movie become fully entertaining and understandable. One thing is for sure, I paid a drunken price for this movie. Regrets? Yes. A drunken regret? Not at all.


Wednesday, April 11, 2018

When you're a latchkey kid and watch too many action movies.

Watching all these videohomes, you'd think I'd wanna be a vigilante like Jorge Reynoso, a cop like Mario Almada or a killer clown, but alas, I'm just me. Almost 30 and still confused about life in general. I'll survive it though. That's the meaning of life after all. Survival (I guess).


In Infancia Violenta (aka "Violent Child"), a kid named Andres knows exactly what he wants to be in life because of watching too many action movies. He wants to be a cop. A vigilante cop to be exact. His dad (played by Sebastian Ligarde) is a cop who encourages Andres to pursue this type of career. Nice, huh? Andres is still in middle school though, so he's still got a long way till he gets to become a cop. So then, he 'borrows' his father's spare gun and goes out in the night hunting for bad guys. Most of the bad guys however do petty crimes that don't deserve a bullet in the head. One guy just steals a purse. Another guy seems to be just taking some papers to an office at night. Andres, immature & all; assumes they're doing very wrong and deserve to die.

Since Andres' dad is rarely home because of work; he hangs out with the hot neighbor lady (Felicia Mercado) who lives across the street from him. She prepares him food, goes out to walks with him, watch movies (duh!) and even watch him shoot cans with the gun. She is practically like a mother to him. Andres' vigilante ways then takes a deadlier turn when he wants to gun down a vicious gang of weirdos who dance to Guns n' Roses music. The leader is so dramatic looking with his ponytail and all black clothes. The babes that are with him are hot and his goons are dorky as fuck.


I first heard of Infancia Violenta when I came across an Amazon review for it. The review was amusing and came from a source that I'm quite familiar with. I then searched for Infancia Violenta for quite a while and eventually got a copy of it. The movie doesn't disappoint at all. It's fascinating from start to finish. What makes it fascinating is how bizarre the movie is set up. One minute we see Andres watching Cobra, then next thing you know, he is in town at night with the gun on his hand. There's also a 3-4 minute scene of Felicia Mercado making a sandwich. She spreads mayo on the bread first, puts a slice of cheese, peels the slice of skin off the ham and then adds extra mayo. Why such a scene was filmed is beyond me, but I was mildly amused. Then there's the scene where we first meet the vicious gang of weirdos. Guns N Roses' "Locomotive" is playing loud on the boombox. The girls are seductively dancing, the boys are dancing ridiculously. They then beat up a nerdy looking dude. Beautiful scene. I cried.

Since Infancia Violenta is about the dangers of violent action movies, there is action of course. Andres is of course in all of them. He shoots up "bad" guys and even helps out the police when a video store is being robbed. He shoots one of the robbers that his dad could of shot! Wow!

I enjoyed Infancia Violenta. It made me want to pick up a gun and just shoot. Well, not really. If anything, it just made me smile in joy because this movie was awesome and hilarious. Please do watch it. If your child is very impressionable, then I recommend they don't watch it because they might end up shooting you or some random person on the street.