So school kept me from writing about this. For those that like the short answer:

GO SEE IT.

For the long answer:

It's a movie about two friends that just want to get laid and have fun as they ride a motorcycle across Latin America. But their trip changse them as they interact with the poor people of the countryside.

It's based on the two diaries that Ernesto Guevara (Che Guevara) and Alberto Granada (Mial) kept during their trip.

The movie is really sweet and you really end up having as much fun as the two seem to be having on their trip, which makes the scenes with the poor people of South America even more poignant.

It's in Spanish, and colloquial and little idiosyncrasies of the Spanish languages make the situations quite a bit funnier than the subtitles make them seem (since English doesn't have a formal/informal case like latin based languages) but the entire theatre was laughint a minute into the movie, so it was great.

What's really interesting is that there's no backstory. You don't really know what the hell was happening or who these two guys are before the trip. They're two doctors, and they lie to the people they meet, so you never really know their lives before the point the movie starts (and the movie starts with them leaving on the trip). I thought it was an interesting way of interpreting the one-sideness that you get from diaries/memoirs. No backstory, no history, just what they did, and what they saw, filtered through the words they wrote. (There is narration from small passages in the diaries.)

It's not slow moving, but there isn't a lot of action or anything heroic, mostly because we don't usually lead heroic/action driven lives. (The movie ends when the road trip ends, which was quite a few years before Ernesto started to be known as the famous Che Guevara, so no crazy revolutionary speeches/gun fights or anything like that.)


It's funny because growing up in Miami and being hispanic with people from all over Latin America, I saw a lot of myself in the interactions. How eventhough you come from separate countries and cultures, the fact that you speak spanish and were all poor at one point before you got to the U.S., makes you really share an experience together. And that's what the movie builds upon, these two wealthy doctor-types, and the similarities they have as a people with the poor that they meet.

There's only one cheesy, dramatized part in the movie, and it's towards the end as can be expected since they're changes are culminating one on top of the other. But one is acceptable.


So yea. It's in a very limited release right now. (We only have two prints here in San Francisco, and I think they only made about 5 prints for the entire U.S. for the opening weekend, and probably release more as it get more popular) But seriously you should get out and look for it.

Also, I think this has a great chance at not only winning Best Foreign Oscar for sure, but maybe even getting Gael Garcia Bernal and nomination and even a win for acting.