No manches, Frida (2016)

No Manches Frida arrives as a Mexican remake of the German comedy Fack ju Göhte, a provenance that invites skepticism and then declines to reward any of it. Omar Chaparro plays Zequi, a bank robber fresh from prison who learns that the site of his buried loot is now a high school gymnasium. His solution is to impersonate a substitute teacher. Martha Higareda plays the earnest Miss Lucy, and the two of them orbit each other for ninety minutes with the mild friction that passes for romantic tension in a broad studio comedy. The film grossed $23.5 million worldwide, most of it in the United States, which tells us something about the diaspora audience and rather less about artistic ambition.

The cast is entirely Mexican and Latino, and we should state plainly that this reflects geography, not a statement. The film is a Mexican production set in Mexico. There are women in it. None of them arrive carrying a thesis. The robbery is staged for slapstick, not as an indictment of late capital. No character wrestles with climate, identity, neurodivergence, or the reinterpretation of history. The film has no interest in instructing anyone about anything, and in this regard it is almost restful. A comedy that simply wants to be funny is a rare vintage now, and we can note the vintage without pretending it is a virtue.

The result is a competent, vulgar, occasionally charming farce about a criminal who learns to care about teenagers. A sequel followed in 2019, as sequels do. There is nothing here to alarm a culture warrior or to gratify one. The film sits at zero on nearly every axis of contemporary social concern, not because it is reactionary but because it is uninterested. We classify it accordingly, with the mild fatigue of a sommelier presented with a perfectly drinkable table wine.