Los Hongos is an interesting, honest and positive movie revolving around two teenagers growing up in the streets of Cali in Colombia but you can read all that in the synopsis.
I had a good time watching it but it lacked a little something for me to really love it. The most important thing for me in a film is emotional impact and involvement which is not the strongest aspect of this work, not that it tries to be or pretend to deliver on it.
I said the film was honest because that's how it felt to me. I could truly believe that the characters of this story were real and that everything that happened to them really did happen but ultimately, the lack of really fulfilling events, or deeply emotional scenes that is brilliantly characteristic of what this kinda lost youth is experiencing, caused me to not be able to get into the film as much as I would have wanted to.
I think this film deserve a very high praise for its sincerity, its beautiful simplicity, its realistic and sometimes touching characters as well as its genuine rendition of a youth that I could totally relate to even though I live in a different continent. Even though I wasn't blown away by the film, I can say that I'm happy to have stumbled upon it and that I have a lot of respect for it.
Final verdict: 7.5/10. This rating is not an attempt to evaluate the actual value of the film but merely reflects my own appreciation of it.