Carnaval

Example of irony: when an actor, who is an Instagram influencer in real life, plays an Instagram influencer character that learned about life's not just about number of likes on social media.

So a new Brazilian movie just dropped on Netflix. Right after I read the synopsis and see the cover of this movie, I was pretty sure that this is gonna be a throwaway one.

And I was right. This is one of the most pretentious movies I have seen this year. Pretty much the first half of the movie was just these four annoying girls screaming and partying. I didn't even know what was going on. The plot was basic and predictable in almost every way.

Ah the acting. Screaming a lot doesn't mean you're a good actor. This movie felt like the ones where these actor-wannabe influencers or Youtubers made their debut. I didn't expect any good acting, and I was right.

The themes. When you try to preach too hard, you become fake and unnatural. There were many themes that the movies tried to throw at the audience: don't judge by the cover, be who you really are, know what is most important to you, and faith. Each of the four main character here had some background and revelation that reflected one of the themes. However, every single one of them were unjustified, sudden, unearned, and fake. I scratched my head at how these character came to these revelations.

And the most pretentious one was the main chick, who's supposed to learn that social media isn't about likes, BUT she constantly gained followers throughout the movie. Like what?!? How was she supposed to learn if she kept getting more famous?

Overall, this movie was a trap, especially the synopsis. I didn't expect much, but holy it's fake as heck. Don't even search up this movie. 0.5/10.

I stumbled upon the 2021 comedy "Carnaval" by random chance here in 2021. And with it being a movie that I hadn't already seen, of course I opted to sit down and watch what director Leandro Neri had to offer with this comedy.

Having sat through it, I must admit that I feel that I wasn't exactly the target audience for "Carnaval", with me being a 46 year old man at the time of watching the movie. Nay, "Carnaval" felt more like it was a movie aimed for a female audience in their late 20s or early 30s, I suppose. So there wasn't much particular entertainment in "Carnaval" for me.

And for a comedy of this type, I feel that writers Lipy Adler, Audemir Leuzinger, Luisa Mascarenhas and Leandro Neri just played it safe and utilized every trope already seen in other comedies of this particular kind. So "Carnaval" didn't bring anything new to the comedy genre. In fact, the storyline was rather mundane and generic to me.

The acting performances in "Carnaval" were fair. I wasn't familiar with a single actor or actress in the movie, but I think that they did perform well enough, given the limitations of the script and storyline.

Ultimately, then I made it through "Carnaval", but it is not a movie that I enjoyed, nor is it a movie that I will ever return to watch a second time.

My rating of "Carnval" lands on a generous four out of ten stars, as the movie had some nice enough things to it, despite it failing on the comedy aspect.

Don't hear people taking a casual comedy seriously. The world is complicated enought! Gorgeous locations in Brazil and good production overall.

Correcting one review here: The film is not set at "El Salvador" country but the city of Salvador in Brazil.

This is a Tourism promotion movie for Bahia with a very cheesy, lame story and bad acting.

Skip it.