‘Bob Trevino Likes It’ knows there's crying to do
HANDOUT
There are limits. There are limits to how many tear-jerking elements a movie can have before your radar goes off and declares, “You don’t need to try so hard.” There are also limits to how many poignant moments of loneliness and friendship and people trying their damn best and occasionally that being enough before, no matter how aware you are that the movie is doing what it’s doing, your heart and tear ducts acknowledge that they’re on board anyway.
“Bob Trevino Likes It” is a movie about two people becoming friends, and it doesn’t work if you don’t believe the kinship. But I did, and I think you should and will. Lily (Barbie Ferreira of “Euphoria” and “Unpregnant” in a lead role that should get her many more) has been dealt a lousy hand; her mom got into drugs when Lily was four and bailed, and her dad (French Stewart, yes that French Stewart) may as well have unreliable selfish cheapskate tattooed on his judgy face. So the universe is finally throwing her one, it seems, when Lily, desperately reaching out to her now-estranged dad on Facebook even though the profile doesn’t have a picture, discovers that this is a different Bob Trevino (John Leguizamo, immensely appealing) who is about 9,000 times better of a human being.
Again: If you have a low threshold for sad issues — and, to be clear, it goes beyond awkward texts and bad bosses; we’re talking serious illnesses, lost pets and dead children — it might be best to avoid “Bob Trevino Likes It.” For everyone else, this is a movie willing to feel its sadness as some of its characters seek to break free of the repression and invalidated feelings that bottled them up in the first place. That’s bittersweet and uplifting, even if a few moments (one instance in particular of a surprise phone call, pun not intended, doesn’t ring true) fall on the wrong side of predictability.
Yet one person’s manipulative is another’s sincere, and “Bob Trevino” is the kind of hopeful movie I want to believe in. It’s quietly wise about healthy connection, and goodness and its absence, and that for all the skepticism about technology people can misrepresent themselves in person too. It also gets how tragedy puts the world at a distance and features maybe the best use of scrapbooking since “Arrested Development.”
Set aside a dated line here and a corny one there and you’re left with something genuinely moving (yes, I cried, a couple times) and surprisingly talkable. And while discussing, you can ask: For a movie like this, are you a sucker if you give in, or if you don’t?
B
NEW: WANT TO SETTLE A MOVIE DEBATE, TALK ABOUT '90S FAVORITES, OR EVEN HAVE YOUR SHORT HOME MOVIE REVIEWED? BOOK A VIDEO FROM MATT VIA CAMEO
ORDER “TALK ‘90S WITH ME: 23 UNPREDICTABLE CONVERSATIONS WITH STARS OF AN UNFORGETTABLE DECADE”
Matt’s new book arrived Sept. 27, 2022, and Richard Roeper raves: “Matt Pais deserves four stars for reintroducing us to many of the greatly talented but often unsung heroes of 1990s film. This is a terrific read.”
ARE YOU A “SAVED BY THE BELL” FAN?
Order “Zack Morris Lied 329 Times! Reassessing every ridiculous episode of ‘Saved by the Bell’ … with stats” (featuring interviews with 22 cast members, plus the co-founder of Saved by the Max and the creator of “Zack Morris is Trash”)
GET 100 STORIES FOR JUST $4.99