Spanish speaking Will Ferrel fails to illicit more than minor chuckles

"Casa de Mi Padre" is one of those films that are kind of awkward to watch for all of the wrong reasons. Set up as a parody of Mexican action films and telenovelas, the film does an excellent job of capturing the look and atmosphere of its subject but sadly fails to bring the actual humor.

Set in Mexico, the film follows Will Ferrell as well meaning but dim rancher Armando Alvarez, whose intense love of his father's land prevents him from finding a woman that understands him. When his more beloved brother, Raul -played by Diego Luna- returns after becoming a successful businessman, he brings back trouble from his shady business practices, forcing Armando to defend the honor of his father's ranch from the dealings of Mexican drug dealer, Onza, played by Gael Garcia Bernal.

It's hard to really harp on "Casa de Mi Padre" for its intent. The cast speaks primarily Spanish throughout the entire movie, which may lead to one of Ferrell's most subdued comedic performances of all time, as he had little room for improvisation. The film generally captures the feel of what its parodying, due to the well suited cinematography and limited musical score. I truly believe that the people involved with this film loved what they were doing and tried to make a worthwhile comedy out of a subject that they love and respect.

The opening of the film features a fantastic musical theme sung by Christina Aguilera that could give some of the "James Bond" openings a run for their money. From a production aspect, the film nails the feel of the Mexican Westerns of the late '80s through late '90s. Despite this, "Casa de Mi Padre" commits the ultimate comedic sin by failing to actually be funny, which unfortunately invalidates all of the good intentions that I'm sure the crew had in mind.

As much as I admire what the filmmakers tried to do, "Casa de Mi Padre" is a type of parody that I hate in today's age. The film is primarily, a stock Mexican Western, beat for beat. Every handful of scenes will do something zany or poke fun at its own tropes in a metafictional manner, but rarely are the jokes ever actually funny. I can count, on a single hand, the number of genuinely hard laughs that I got from its entire running time. Most of the time, it was lucky to get so much as a chuckle out of me. Considering its structure, I can't help but feel that if this was a five to ten minute comedy skit on "Mad TV" or "Saturday Night Live," it would have been brilliant.

I'm rather surprised at how much I wanted to like "Casa de Mi Padre" more than it permitted me to do so. Coming from the team behind such "classics" such as "Step Brothers" and "Land of the Lost," the film shows a remarkable amount of restraint that I would like to see from this production crew in the future. Unfortunately, I can't recommend this outing as more than a rental on the off chance that you'll find this stale form of humor more forgiving than I have.