Desperados
netflixAs Netflix continues to throw seemingly endless money at a seemingly endless amount of projects to create original content across genres – hopefully reaching the vast majority of audiences – one of the biggest areas of growth has admittedly been in adult comedy. Netflix has discovered that there is a large audience for these films at home, and has nearly revitalised the genre in some ways, creating some of the best adult comedies in recent memory. As with any specific genre of Netflix Originals, for every great film there are plenty of lesser outings, which for comedy are represented by LP's directorial debut Desperados. The film follows a woman named Wesley (Nasim Pedrad) as she and her two best friends Brooke (Anna Camp) and Kaylie (Sarah Burns) travel to Mexico to find and erase an angry email that Wesley sent to her boyfriend Jared (Robbie Amell). While Wesley was blaming him of ghosting her, in all reality, he was in a coma as a result of a car accident he had on vacation.
With a close look at the promotional material and the plot of the film, it comes as no surprise that the weakest aspect inDesperados is easily its writing, especially when it comes to its comedic elements. Desperados is a film that constantly goes for cheap humour, not only being lazy, but also even offensive. Including continued gags regarding subjects like pedophilia and white women talking down to Mexican characters – rhetoric plagued with hurtful stereotypes of being bumbling idiots – this release just feels out of place in 2020. Even the jokes that aren't perpetuating offensive themes tend to simply not be funny. Much of Desperados plays out as an extremely basic comedy that has been seen a million times before, failing to result in a memorable comedic experience every single one of those times.
With that said, the one saving grace this movie has is the acting, which has an undeniable charm to it. There undoubtedly are scenes where these actors are trying way too hard and come off as annoying, but when they naturally play off of each other and give a more casual back and forth, the chemistry between them is noticeable and legitimate. Even though the writing isn’t great, the personableness of these performances made the film at least watchable, and managed to get some chuckles. This still fails to make up for the blandness of the majority of the comedy within the film. When the film finally decides to take itself seriously, and tries to build a satisfying conclusion and thesis on love and the experience of struggling to find it – especially when you feel like your life should already be at the next stage – it still has trouble being anything but shallow and average. Unfortunately, nothing this film has to say, either comedic or serious, is new or is going to be memorable after the credits end.
It would be a complete lie to say that Desperados even comes close as the most miserable thing Netflix has put out there in recent memory, but at the same time, there is simply nothing in the film that deserves taking the time to watch it. The film is an extremely bland and basic romantic comedy whose best aspect is chemistry between its actors. In an absolute gold rush of content, with multiple streaming services and extensive VOD options, the idea of prioritising this over a thousand other films is extremely questionable and feels misplaced.
