Cantinflas

As much as I love learning about the history of Hollywood, there can be something pretentious about the Hollywood biopic. The story of a great creative mind taking Hollywood by storm is one that's been told too many times and easily falls into repetition. Aside from that, there's always the sneaking suspicion that the screenwriter or director is co-opting his subject's story to wrestle with his own greatness.

"Catinflas" intrigued me enough at the start that I decided to throw caution to the wind hoping the plot wouldn't veer into cliché. I enjoyed seeing the trial and error process over how Catinflas discovered his true calling, I thought the setting was unique (especially the unforgiving Mexican stage where heckling is the norm) and the actor who played Catinflas had a magnetic working-man kind of presence.

The decision to intercut the story of Mario "Catinflas" Morelli's ascension to fame over the years and the trials and tribulation "Around the World in 80 Days" producer Michael Todd to get his film made, also had potential except for the fact Michael Todd seemed like a rather flat character (not to take anything away from Imperioli's performance), and while I enjoyed "Around the World in 80 Days" as a kid, I'm not sure if there's anything to celebrate in Todd's methodology of putting every actor he could find in the film.

The storyline itself is one I've seen a hundred times before, so the film was largely on the shoulders of Oscar Jaenada and to the degree he could, Jaenada did an extraordinary job. If only he had slightly better material to work with.