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Drama/Mex (2006)

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33

Average Rating: 5.1/10
Reviews Counted: 21
Fresh: 7 | Rotten: 14

Lovely visuals can't save Drama/Mex from its shaky camerawork and thematically uneven plot.

44

Average Rating: 5.8/10
Critic Reviews: 9
Fresh: 4 | Rotten: 5

Lovely visuals can't save Drama/Mex from its shaky camerawork and thematically uneven plot.

audience

54

liked it
Average Rating: 3.2/5
User Ratings: 1,141

My Rating

Movie Info

For his sophomore effort, Drama/Mex, writer-director Gerardo Naranjo (Malachance) juxtaposes three back-to-back stories, set in the once lush and exclusive - now over-commercialized and garish - resort town of Acapulco, over the course of the same long, hot night. Naranjo mounts an experimental narrative structure, with each successive tale set backward in time just prior to the end of the last story - a "relay-style" structural experimentation that mirrors and recalls Fernando Mereilles's City

Unrated, 1 hr. 32 min.

Art House & International, Drama

Gerardo Neranjo

Dec 4, 2007

IFC First Take

Cast

All Critics (21) | Top Critics (9) | Fresh (8) | Rotten (14) | DVD (3)

Drama/Mex has flashy style but puppetlike characters and unconvincing stories.

August 16, 2007 Full Review Source: Los Angeles Times | Comment
Los Angeles Times
Top Critic IconTop Critic

This relentlessly downbeat portrait of numerous troubled characters is ultimately too derivative and familiar for it to connect with art house audiences despite some effective moments and good performances by its mainly youthful cast.

July 17, 2007 Comment
Hollywood Reporter
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Visually arresting but thematically uneven, Gerardo Naranjo's fictional snapshot of a gritty Mexican beach is simply too desperate to shock us.

July 13, 2007 Full Review Source: New York Daily News | Comment
New York Daily News
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Drama/Mex can't see past its nihilistic little nose.

July 12, 2007 Full Review Source: Newsday | Comment
Newsday
Top Critic IconTop Critic

There may be nothing moral or especially original about this movie, but it's got life in it.

July 11, 2007 Full Review Source: Salon.com | Comment
Salon.com
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Drama/Mexmeans to say something about its country of origin, though it's hard to know exactly what.

July 11, 2007 Comment
New York Times
Top Critic IconTop Critic

This morally-ambiguous adventure's cleverly-concealed, parallel powder keg plotlines are sufficiently compelling to keep you riveted to these loco losers' predicaments till the bitter end.

December 5, 2007 Full Review Source: Sly Fox | Comment
Sly Fox

[Director Gerardo] Naranjo seems to be onto something, even if he doesn't quite get it right this time out.

November 1, 2007 Full Review Source: St. Paul Pioneer Press | Comment
St. Paul Pioneer Press

The murky melodrama's vicarious perversions may set a dubious new low standard in cinema - gross-out tragedy.

July 17, 2007 Full Review | Comment (1)
WBAI Web Radio

Drama/Mex has an overheated plot, but it plays out at a low boil, mainly because Naranjo is more interested in the subtle stresses of human interaction than in shrill desperation.

July 13, 2007 Full Review Source: AV Club | Comment
AV Club

This morally-ambiguous adventure's cleverly-concealed, parallel powder keg plotlines are sufficiently compelling to keep you riveted to these loco losers' predicaments till the bitter end.

July 13, 2007 Full Review Source: NewsBlaze | Comment
NewsBlaze

It is just too bad that the location is far more evocative than the drama itself.

July 13, 2007 Comment
Reel.com

The turgid pace and shaky camerawork, both seemingly a deliberate style, evaporate whatever cinema-geek enjoyment there might have been.

July 13, 2007 Full Review Source: Film Journal International | Comment
Film Journal International

A Mexican drama set in Acapulco that revolves around flimsily drawn characters who fail to elicit our empathy.

July 13, 2007 Full Review | Comment
Spirituality and Practice

All the edgy style in the world canâ(TM)t camouflage a black hole. Drama/Mex turns loose these insistently shallow characters and provides no insight into their bad behavior.

July 12, 2007 Full Review Source: Time Out New York | Comment
Time Out New York

Writer/director Naranjo is a talent worth keeping an eye on -- provided he can find his own idiom and less predictable subject matter. And it's impossible to take your eyes off the ravishing Garcia in her debut.

July 11, 2007 Full Review Source: Boxoffice Magazine | Comment
Boxoffice Magazine

'Drama/Mex' fails to supply motivation for or roundness to its unappealing inhabitants, and its two stories lack any reflection to one another.

July 8, 2007 Full Review Source: ReelTalk Movie Reviews | Comment
ReelTalk Movie Reviews
More Critic Reviews

Audience Reviews for Drama/Mex

The worst part about the awful dialogue said by most of these characters is that it's the most realistic I've seen so far in a Mexican film. The characters fail to have any depth or insight into their lives. They should've just stayed with one of the stories, since the director was unable to fully tell any of the two

April 1, 2008
divinetrash
Quinto Wallight

Super Reviewer

I found the next Wong Kar-wai, and he's a Mexican! The most exciting new filmmaker I've seen in a long long time. He wears his Godard and Cassavetes on his sleeve and mixes it with machismo, sand, futbol, and alcohol. Puro mexicano.

February 12, 2009
GringoTex
GringoTex Johnson

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