Not everything in the script shows that same care, but this is still an interesting, if not wholly successful first feature from the star. Thailand is lovingly shot with an eye for its vibrant colors, and there are some late scenes that show an impressive style from Green. Green’s character-driven script is at its best when it’s silliest or when it focuses on the easy chemistry between Green and Meyer, showing a lived-in friendship. If this role is any evidence, Green doesn’t seem to know his strengths as an actor are not in playing dead-eyed and depressed. “Changeland” picks up in its second half, not coincidentally when Green’s Brandon is awakened out of his stupor. As the two travel around the country, everyone Brandon meets, including a tour guide (Brenda Song) and an American expat (Macaulay Culkin), offers him advice on how he should live his life in the wake of heartbreak.
“Changeland” is a largely low-key road dramedy that centers on a rekindled friendship between two men on a trip to Thailand.Īfter discovering his wife’s infidelity, a wrecked and nearly catatonic Brandon ( Green) asks his estranged pal Dan ( Breckin Meyer) to join him on the vacation he planned to take with his spouse. With the wackiness of “Robot Chicken” as his signature work behind the camera, Seth Green’s feature directorial debut feels like a departure. By the same token, the film highlights the ingrained homophobia in the Latino community. In “Papi Chulo,” immigrants have lives beyond the white world and in multiple scenes pity its obliviousness. Scenes without him drag into insipid territory.īutler hired native Spanish-speakers, which translates into commendably authentic dialogue, and shot the film in Pico Rivera, a city that’s seldom photographed. Patiño delights with the precise gestures to convey that though Ernesto is there to get paid to support his family, compassion for another person, even a privileged doofus, shouldn’t be conditional.
Quizzical looks that evolve into sincere shared smiles fill in the gaps. Picked from a line of many like him outside a hardware store, Ernesto (Alejandro Patiño), an undocumented day laborer from Nayarit, Mexico, takes on the job.Įach man knows enough of the other’s first language to communicate the essentials. In an effort to attain closure via physical erasure, he seeks to repaint the ostentatious deck of his home. Refreshingly more incisive, Irish writer-director John Butler’s “Papi Chulo” partly thwarts such presumption with researched specificity and POC characters with strong agency.ĭowncast gay weatherman Sean ( Matt Bomer) has an on-air meltdown over a romantic separation. Tales of unlikely friendships where an explicit power imbalance is at play tend to suffer from their own saccharine aspirations.
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