Caixa Dois

If you look for a movie which is light and can make you laugh a lot, "Caixa Dois" is a good choice. It is very well elaborated, the casting is excellent and the story flows quickly and we don't feel the time passing. It is based on a play of a great Brazilian actor and writer Juca de Oliveira. Juca has a long experience on theater playing and also TV novels. The story is interesting and deals with the problem of corruption in all levels of the society. But speaks in a funny way so that we can see it until the end which arrives quickly because it hold us all the time. For me, it is the best Bruno Barreto's film since "O Que É Isso, Companheiro". Brazilian films must also be like "Caixa Dois" and not only show the poverty and misery of the people or deal only with surrealistic themes. "Caixa Dois" is a film to get a message, to delight and to make believe that movies are this: something also for fun, not only for to be subject of long philosophical discussions. My note is ten.

The corrupt banker and owner of the Banco Federal Luiz Fernando (Fúlvio Stefanini) negotiates a slush fund of fifty-million Reais (twenty million dollar) with the corrupt businessman Carlão (Zedu Neves). His graduated in Harvard assessor Romeiro (Cássio Gabus Mendes) receives a provisional check from Carlão to be exchanged by a deposit in Switzerland in the afternoon. Meanwhile the naive middle-class bank manager of Banco Federal Roberto (Daniel Dantas) is proud of his twenty-five years of service working in the bank and worships Luiz Fernando. Together with his wife and teacher Angelina (Zezé Polessa), they are paying a bank loan to buy their house and support their only son Henrique (Thiago Fragoso) in the university. When Carlão has a stroke and is interned in deep coma, Luiz Fernando invites his secretary Ângela (Giovanna Antonelli), who is Henrique's girlfriend, to be his figurehead and use her bank account to deposit the dirty check. In return, he would pay seven hundred thousand Reais to her. Ângela accepts the bribe, but Romeiro commits a mistake and deposits the check in Angelina's account. Meanwhile Roberto is fired with 599 other clerks in a downsizing operation and decides to kill his former "friend" Luiz Fernando.

"Caixa Dois" is a funny joke with the sad reality of corruption in the Brazilian society. I have just seen this movie in a Mexican television with subtitles in Spanish, and I do not know whether overseas people might appreciate this comedy. First, the jokes are much related to Brazilian reality, where many people from different classes are in the end corrupt; in the story, only the naive Roberto ends honest and even his family mocks him. Further, the translation in the subtitles is very poor and loses many witty words and expressions, and the viewer that does not speak Portuguese will not understand the ironic double meaning or the play with words, and even the slang used in many lines. The acting is great; the beauty of Giovanna Antonelli is awesome and I have really had a good time watching this comedy. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Caixa Dois" ("Slush Fund")

Note: On 30 October 2009, I saw this movie again on DVD.

A complete waste of both my time and money. Caixa Dois is one of the worst movies I've seen this year so far. Completely terrible screenplay, awful soundtrack, horrible acting, way too predictable script from beginning to end, jokes weren't funny at all (only people laughing were two 60 year old ladies with speech impediment). Most of the time it just reminded me of those ghastly Brazilian soap operas, with all the over-acting and badly shaped slapstick humor. And the music! Oh my God, the freaking music just wouldn't give up! It's almost like the editors realized the movie wasn't funny and tried to fix this minor issue by inserting hours of nice romantic-comedy-like songs on the back. The problem is it wasn't nice at all! It drove me crazy, actually. And please tell me, God, what is a great director such as Bruno Barreto doing with his life? First "O Casamento De Romeu e Julieta", and now THIS??? Geez, what's going on in this world??? What gets me real angry is knowing that these actors made a lot of money with this piece of cow dump. Overall, it just sucked.

I would have given it less than the 3 stars that I gave. The best acting, by far, was Daniel Dantas's. All other actors seemed slightly embarrassed - some too contrived, some too exaggerated.

I can't believe that in 2007 someone still believes that the same swear word repeated in every line happens to be funny. It is not. The plot, well, if that was a hole, you could find oil in it. Unfortunately, this movie did not work out not even as a lighthearted pastime. Bruno Barreto certainly could have done better as the subject, that of corruption, does hold some interest. I also thought he'd make more subtle or non-subtle comments on real cases of corruption, something that could pull chuckles because of its cleverness, but no. The very few references didn't work out well, either.