Matt Piedmont’s impish telenovela spoof Casa De Mi Padre belongs to a small but endearing subset of genre pastiches like Black Dynamite, Grindhouse, and Hobo With A Shotgun, films that pride themselves on faithfully reproducing the grimy, dated look and feel of whatever they’re spoofing while reveling in low-budget phoniness and hilariously transparent fakery. Casa De Mi Padre takes place on sets specifically designed to look cheaper and faker than any studio back lot. It’s populated by characters that laugh long and lustily for no discernible reason, and it features “wild animals” that look like they were purchased from a cut-rate toy store. Its commitment to cheeseball verisimilitude extends to shooting the film almost entirely in Spanish, even though superstar gringo Will Ferrell is the lead.
