There is some deep comedian to hear the word “nutty” repeatedly come up with a serious conversation about economics. Nutcrackers, as they are formally called, are homemade cocktails of sugar fruit drinks and cheap spirits that day drinks hide in plastic bottles for beach consumption. They are also the bedrock for Ricos (Juan Collado) that grows underground beverage empire. The 19-year-old Bronx inhabitant spends his summer days combing beaches with a cooler full of nuts, selling flavors such as the lemon-tasted Pikachu and the pink Kirby panth for $ 15, two for $ 10, or if a customer is quite enough, An Instagram follows. He is convinced that Hustle will snowball in a company that gives him a house and a car in no time at all. His threatening success is such inevitability that the details are irrelevant to him.
Rico’s blind self -confidence puts him with some All -American charm, but the three women in his life are not so hooked on his career. He has a lot of problems that cannot be solved with nuts-naughty a child who comes in seven months with his 16-year-old girlfriend Destiny (Destiny Cheo). The couple still lives with Ricos Mami (Yohanna Florentino) and younger sister Sally (Nathaly Navarro), who are both determined to make Rico understand the enormous responsibility that comes his way. They are so concerned about his inability to be a parent that everyone has temporarily seen the other way around the statutory rape of everything.
The composition between idyllic summer hijinx and adult responsibility is the background of “Crazy bills to pay (or desert, dile que no soy malo). “Joel Alfonso Varga’s debut is a lively tableau in life in the hard -composed Dominican societies in Bronx and captures the joy and tragedies in Rico’s life with such specificity that they eventually become impossible to distinguish from each other. Vargas and Kinematographer Rufai Zaja Distribute a 4: 3 Image ratio To create a square frame that invokes the warm feeling of browsing through old polaroids. When the young entrepreneur winds through life, hawks nuts and tries to pick up girls when he forgets he is spoken for, it feels like we look back on the last summer of his youth advantageously from an inevitable future that Hasn has spoken I still happened.
Rico is the only male nature of any meaning in “crazy bills to pay”, and the lack of masculine presence looms all over the whole film as it lacked bit of Rico’s puzzle. His mother does an admirable job of trying to keep him out of trouble, even though her efforts to control him away from the paths that kept his father out of his life strike Rico as they try to throw his free spirit. Rico’s grandiose dreams of making money and being a supplier without any real sense of real responsibility is the words of a young man who grew up without a father and sprints against adult archetypes for which he is not ready in any way.
“Mad Bills to Pay” rests on the performances of Collado and Cheo, both the first time actors carrying the discreet film on their shoulders. Rico is charismatic to the point where it would be entertaining to look at him, and his youthful delusions of greatness would be sincerely delightful if he was at a point in life that gave him more time to figure himself out. Checo’s fate is extremely shy when we first meet her and approach conversations with all the paralysis you can expect from a high school that moves in with the disappointed family of her legal adult baby dad. A small proportion of Rico’s trust eventually rubs her, and some of her caution on him – not enough for any of their deficiencies to be wiped out in time for parenting, but enough to leave us with the feeling that life will continue.
For a movie about two young people who are poorly prepared for a massive life event, “Mad Bills to Pay” is brilliantly retained where all ports. No one is undergoing a massive bow that fixes everything, nor are we shown any of the parents who will constitute real challenges for Rico and Destiny. Instead, Vargas leaves us with the feeling that the world will continue to spin when the young couple tries to find out things. Unplanned circumstances rarely end as a movie, and Rico may not achieve his dream to retire at 40 to spend time with his adult children. But as the sun rises tomorrow, he will continue to find its way in the world one nutty at a time.
Rating: A-
“Mad Pills to Pay (or Destiny, Dile Que No Soy Malo)” premiered by 2025 Sundance Film festival. It is currently seeking US distribution.
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