The importance of revisiting the places you frequented in childhood and recalling past loves that you thought you had forgotten is what ‘I’m going to have a good time’, the new film by David Serrano, is all about.. The director of ‘Días de Fútbol’ and ‘Vote Juan’ goes back behind the cameras to set up a story that runs on two sides: one in the 1980s and the other today.
Set in Valladolid, “I’ll have fun” tells the relationship between David and Layla, whose romance begins when the G Men connect them instantly during the last bars of the eighth of EGB, however, time passes and adulthood does not leave much time for singing and dancing. Thirty years later, Layla (played in her adult version by Karla Souza) returns to the city to collect an award for her successful career as a director and decides to meet David (played in her adult version by Raúl Arévalo). The unusual couple will remember their musical adventures and find they still have something of those children who danced and sang.
The new Serrano, sponsored by producer Enrique López Lavigne, arrives in a somewhat boring summer after the success of ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’ has dissipated somewhat and with Sony waiting for its adrenaline-fueled proposal ‘Bullet Train ‘has managed to monopolize the summer bill. “I’ll Have Fun” is a slightly more delinquent alternative to family cinema, such as “Father, there’s only one 3” or animated franchises like “Minions: The Origin of Gru” or “Lightyear”a fresh and fun proposal, where the comedy and music of the acclaimed Madrid group come together in a tender nostalgic story.
Handbook on how to use nostalgia
The current industry norm is to squeeze nostalgia to its last consequences. Not only with the continuations of mythical sagas such as ‘Ghostbusters’ or ‘Star Wars’, but also in the musical field with biographical films reminiscent of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ or ‘Elvis’. Serrano, however, distances himself from all this to weave, while maintaining that melancholy look back, his own autobiographical story (the protagonist has a name with him) and that it knows where it doesn’t have to fall to become another corporate product that simply appeals to the slogan “every time it passed it was better”.
To do this, the director makes a very clear move: he devotes much more time to the children’s story. Once this timeline is explored and developed, anchored in the deified decade of the 1980s, he has time to complete it with adult story. Success comes when that second timeline complements and enhances the children’s part, because it offers that mature aspect that only time can give you. The adult characters finish shaping a narrative that without them would have been somewhat helpless. The difference between seeing life from the age of 10 and the age of 40 is seeing how the approach to love has changed or how unfulfilled dreams take over you.. ‘I’ll have fun’ holds that message as it tries to launch another one of reconciliation with your past and hope for those in whom your inner child still lives.
Children shine in a long-awaited decade
In a film where there are actors and actresses of the stature of Raúl Arévalo, Karla Souza or Dani Rovira, the least you expect is that those who steal the film are the children. Izan Fernández, who has already had experience in the role of Simba in the musical “The Lion King”, plays an excited and very young David, perfectly mastering that innocence that betrays someone who falls in love for the first time. For her part, Renata Hermida Richards plays the young Layla, giving her that aftertaste of youthful power mixed with a familiar drowning coming from a strong German mother.
However, the revelatory character of ‘I’m going to have fun’ is Luis, David’s friend, who shines in his childhood facet with Rodrigo Gibaja (who had brief appearances in ‘La casa de papel’ and ‘La que se avecina ‘) and with an equally fun adult version thanks to Raúl Jiménez. The humor of him, equally adorable and tough, fits perfectly with the time, endowing his phrases with very 80s slogans. expressions like “What are you doing, Bitter Kas”, “May you not find out, Contreras” or “You screwed up, Burt Lancaster” populate the dialogues of a Luis that resonates like the revelation of the film. Accompanying this review of those wonderful jokes, the film’s latent eighties can be seen in details such as a walkman, slicked back hair or a department store with the “Galerías Preciados” sign on the door.
Whether they are adults or children, one of the strengths of the film is the perfect connection of each character between their two periods. With a quick glance, and with almost no need to speak, the audience can pinpoint exactly which child corresponds to the adult they are seeing on the screen. Phrases, tics, gestures, details in clothes or hair, everything comes back when it comes to connecting the 30 years that pass between one era and another.
let’s have fun
Without detracting from the magnificent acting work or the precise reconstruction of the time, the soul of the film that connects the present with the past is, of course, the music of Hombres G. With iconic hits like “Voy a passármelo bien”, “Te Quiero” or “Sufre mamón”, the Madrid band is the axis around which everything else revolves. By avoiding making the songs sound fake or artificial, Serrano makes a smart move by turning those guys into fans of the group, so the songs appear at the precise moment they want to express their feelings. Unlike other musicals where history serves the themes, ‘I’ll have fun’ does the opposite: developing a fantastic and precise script puts the irruption of pop / rock music on a serving platewithout having to spoil or change the plot in favor of the songs.
Accompanying the music, another of the determining factors when it comes to promoting the staging are the great choreographies. Although he sometimes remembers “West Side Story” in his eagerness to fill the screen with people (and, even so, he has a clear focus on who the protagonists are), the director, who has a lot of experience in the field of musical theater by adapting works such as ‘Billy Elliot (I want to dance)’ or ‘Grease’, demonstrates his style by varying his numbers between the intimate confessions of the spouses or the absolute party that supposes a meeting with friends.
take things from teenage drama of a more classic high school (with its bullying problems or its school dynamics) and taking up the musical in its entirety, Serrano cites “Del rosa al amarillo” or “A little love story” as references to clarify his position : Although many things are not fulfilled in life, we will always have childhood, that fantastic and almost unreal time in which you fall in love in just two seconds and where a musical group marks the lifestyle that you will drag, at least, until adolescence. Maybe thirty years later you will find yourself walking those same streets, remembering that first love or entering a karaoke to sing with your friends the songs that moved you as a child. And, although nothing is the same anymore, everything will remain the same in memory.
Note: 7
The best: That Serrano does not put history at the service of music, choreography and the perfect management of the temporal structure. The recreation of the 80s.
Worse: If you are not a music lover, some decisions may not excite you because they are cloying or easy.
Source: E Cartelera
