Macho

Macho (2016) has a fun premise: Evaristo (Evo), a fashion designer who's built his career on pretending to be gay, is on the verge of being discovered as a "closet heterosexual." To save his business empire, Evo decides to pretend to date his gay assistant, Sandro.

It starts out as an okay movie, but about halfway through, it really nosedives. Not only was this movie not funny, not only did the acting suck, but one of its scenes actually upset me so much that I had to pause and walk away. One moment Evo and Sandro are hanging out together and getting along great to a backdrop of happy music. The next moment, Sandro is curled up on the ground and Evo is kicking him--really violently kicking him--and yelling homophobic slurs at him. A few seconds later Evo apologizes, implying as he does so that he wasn't in control of himself, and exits with an, "I'm bipolar!"

To rub salt in the wound, Evo also talks in this movie about the "gay privileges" that motivated him to pretend to be gay while building up his business. The man who beats up a guy for being gay has the nerve to talk about gay privilege.

What's more, it never seems to matter that Evo did this. Afterwards, the movie continues to pursue a rom-com storyline between Evo and Sandro and does not really ever address the fact that he physically assaulted Sandro. In another genre, this could be the start of a story about domestic violence. As it was, I still felt that there was nothing comedic about this very jarring scene.

I understand that much of the comedy of this movie comes from (a) the various exaggerations of emotion and plot points and (b) the premise of Evo being a homophobic straight man faced with having to date a man because of the hole he's dug himself into with lying. I get that. I expected some of that going into this movie. I read the summary on Netflix. But this moment crossed a line, and the movie never makes up for it. I don't know if it even could.

There are many other things that made this movie suck (I won't go into it all--spoilers), but that was definitely the worst part, for me as a queer person. I would not recommend this movie.

I really liked the theme and the approach, which are out of the ordinary, despite the comic tone being more of the same, with the same repetitive jokes, however here everything is light, fun and funny, the charismatic protagonists play their role well, and Renato Lopez is so cute... Funny...

If you have nothing else to do, feel free to waste your time. Mostly a gay and fashioned theme movie which had no depth of any characters. Good for popcorn at the best.

Interesting movie about defining sexual identity. Not a crazy comedy: the topic is handled seriously, but still keeping the movie fun. Beautiful settings and costumes!

If you like fashion, men acting like women, men liking men and complexity of sexuality, this is a must watch.

This movie doesn't reflect how Mexicans think about the LGBT+ community... don't get your panties in a bunch. It's just a movie. It has some funny moments, the plot isn't great and, as a comedy/parody/satire, it's meant to be over the top and, in a way, ridiculous. Also as a gay man, I didn't find it homophobic or insulting; just a bit stupid. It is not depicting real life. Don't take it literally, too seriously or as a real life depiction. It's not a great story, or a great movie for that matter. It has nice film locations and OK acting. The first half is much better than the end, which was a little disappointing. Watch it if you have a couple of hours to spare.