Días de fútbol

The characters in this film are all lovable despite being rather pathetic and silly as they stumble through young adulthood, all the while probably making some of the biggest choices and decisions of their lives. They all act like idiots, but you have to love them for not being afraid to be silly and not being immune to being made to look idiotic.

I didn't expect to like "Días de Fútbol" because of the title, but it is really barely about Fútbol, and more about the players of one particularly clumsy team of friends.

I think if there is a message to this film, it is mainly to show how difficult, yet worthwhile relationships can be. This is a romantic comedy involving several couples, many characters and a lot of silliness.

The film that most certainly inspired the Peruvian film 'Once Machos' - it's allright - they all overact though... but it's inoffensive enough and if you want to watch a movie you might not have come across from Spain and you have a spare hour and a half then give it a go, who knows, you might like it!

When I heard about this movie I thought was going to be a bad one. I was wrong. It is a delightful comedy that gets your attention from the very beginning. I had a great time and I laugh a lot while watching this movie. It's a simple comedy that works, without any other pretension. Ernesto Alterio as Antonio is just amazing. You cannot stop laughing when you see him. This is the kind of movie you want to watch with your friends. And don't worry, it's not about football.

If so, I think I didn't get it. It was somewhat entertaining, but hardly funny. I just couldn't have fun with these people. Half the characters were obnoxious, rude, abusive bastards, and the other half were ineffectual, incompetent, mumbling, pathetic losers, or sometimes a combination of the two. And yeah, I know that can be funny sometimes, but this wasn't the kind of bunch I wanted to spend two hours with. I didn't like them, I couldn't find them sympathetic, I couldn't relate to anyone, I couldn't understand why they loved each other so much, and in the end I couldn't help but feel that none of them deserved the luck they had (which was a lot in some cases). All they did was argue, shout, fight, fight again, fight some more, insult each other, do stupid stuff for no reason... It wasn't funny at all, it just got tiring after a while. And believe me, I am NOT squeamish about bad language, but I found that the amount of it in this film was just too much to put up with sometimes. They way the characters overused it made you dislike them even more.

I never quite understood the craze for writer David Serrano's previous film, El Otro Lado de la Cama, which was a huge hit here in Spain, and seeing this didn't change my mind much: he's overrated.

(One positive thing I will say: Alterio's impressive performance as the menacing, borderline psycho Antonio does raise an eyebrow or two. No wonder he got several nominations for Spanish awards)

A well acted, so so crafted, movie that should be considered as a return in form to the typical Spanish comedy of yesteryear. Its plot, a straightforward story about a group of friends that play soccer together, echoes the genre comedies of Pedro Lazaga, Tony Leblanc, Maso, etc. As those films it may not be too original, but it gets quite well the spirit of its time. The characters are true to its time and place and you can imagine them as real persons. As in those films also, acting is brilliant, even bit players shine, dialogs are funny. Specially moving are Natalia Verbeke (I must confess I'm a fan) and Ernesto ALterio, that carries most of the film on his ex-convict role.