This review is for a film originally viewed at the 22nd Annual Tallgrass Film Festival. WD;ED will update when the film becomes available either in theatres or on VOD.
Chosen family is an oft-discussed subject for me. It’s a deeply important thing that cements who you are by who you surround yourself with. Family can be a complicated, painful, deeply traumatic thing and surrounding oneself with those they’ve chosen can be cathartic and healing. Tracie Laymon’s Bob Trevino Likes It takes this idea and runs it through the platform of social media, something that’s been both a blessing and a curse for our species. With these different apps now a part of our daily lives, our self-esteem, what does it look like to scream into the digital void and have no one listen?
We open on Lily (Barbie Ferreira) as she sits down to dinner with her dad, Bob (French Stewart). He’s found a nice Taco Tuesday to take a date to and wants Lily to help him make a good impression with his Tinder dates, but when Lily mixes her up with another one of the many women Bob’s been seeing he cuts her off for good. Lily is a lonely, awkward 20-something that’s just looking for someplace to aim herself. She finds it when she “friends” Bob Trevino on Facebook. Trouble is that this isn’t her dad. This Bob (John Leguizamo) is a nice man who made a friend online. The fallout of this odd, quirky found-family meet-cute has emotional consequences for Lily and the father figures in her life as they navigate what happens when you decide blood isn’t thicker than water.
There’s no denying the performance of Barbie Ferreira in Bob Trevino Likes It. So many modern films do all they can to ignore modern communication like cell phones, social media, and our interaction onscreen. Laymon bravely bases her entire premise around it, utilizing text messages and likes on photos to build a relationship between these two people looking for meaning through their pain. Ferreira is able to accomplish so much with small gestures and facial twitches, delivering an impressive physical performance to match her excellent comedic timing. Leguizamo, one of the great “when are they ever bad?” actors, equals the task with a very different role than he’s had for a while. The Menu allows him to sleaze it up a bit while Violent Night revels in his villainy, but Bob Trevino Likes It is more interested in his softer side. Stoic, stiff-upper-lipped, and in full-on dad-mode, Leguizamo stands out in a role that’s as sweet as it is fun.
The level of familial damage in here is sort of astounding. We don’t often visit the destruction that can be done by pivotal moments in context of ongoing emotional abuse. Lily’s father is, to put it lightly, beyond salvation in a way that will ring true for a significant amount of viewers. Leguizamo Bob, however, finds himself looking for the answer to something unfulfilled as he navigates a breaking marriage (Rachel Bay Jones as wife Jeanie Trevino) to find a new truth. These contrasting figures shine through the lens of Lily, a person that seems unable to find confidence in themselves. There’s an underlying discussion of nature vs. nurture and what each can offer to a person as they develop and find themselves that’s all of hilarious, upsetting, and lovely.
Bob Trevino Likes It is a film that tiptoes up to the line of being emotionally manipulative without fully crossing into that territory, leaving not a dry eye in the house. It’s touching and hilarious, another comedy in a world where it’s a miracle to get one. I loved it and I cannot wait for you all to see this awkward and sweet film.
WRITE DRUNK; EDIT DRUNK 