Coming out of prison, where he has been treated for outbursts of anger,
Antonio (Ernesto Alterio)has the weird udea of studying to become a
psychotherapist, but to make a living he has to drive a cab - which he does
surprisingly well despite not having a driver's license. He also hooks up with
his old friends again, & tries to sort their problems out (without being
asked of course) ...
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Ramon (Roberto Alamo) can't really come to terms with his
wife Carla's (Maria Esteve) pregnancy, not made any better by the fact
that he has contracted something from a hooker & thus doesn'T dare
to have sex with her anymore. |
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Gonzalo (Secun de la Rosa) studies the law, but only with
moderate success, & still lives at his mother's |
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Miguel is a cop, but wants to give up patrolling to become
a singer with a message. Unfortunately he lacks any talend. |
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Charlie (Pere Punce) is an up-&-Coming moviestar, but
his feature film debut is postponed as the production company cannot
find a trained piglet (really). |
... but when Antonio's best friend Jorge (Alberto San Juan) is left by his
girlfriend Violeta (Natalia Verbeke) - incidently Antonio's sister -, Antonio
sees his first real psychotherapeutic mission: All of the friends - plus
Antonio's gangster-friend Serafin (Fernando Tejero) - have to become a soccer
team to play (& win) in some amateur league, to give Jorge back the feeling
of success. Jorge (ignorant that the team is supposed to be therapy for him)
agrees, as he thinks the feeling of success would be great therapy for Antonio. Problem
of course is, all of the friends are in their 30's, by normal standards too old
for the sport, & furthermore miserable at playing soccer. But a series of
defeats doesn't stop Antonio, as he tries about anything to keep up their
morale, from stealing soccer shirts for them (incidently with Brazil printed on
their fronts, thus the team becomes Brazil) to all sorts of massive cheating,
from hidden fouls to bribing the ref - all to little avail, bzut Antonio can't
be stopped in helping his friends, so he steals a piglet for Charlie's movie
(only to later learn the piglet-story was just an elaborate lie to impress his
friends & above all chicks), has Serafin threaten Gonzalo's teachers, &
he even meets his old love again, Macarena (Lola Duenas), who proves to be
still in love with him. 'Even Jorge seems to get better, as he starts to date
Barbara (Pilar Castro), who is crazy for wild sex on the oddest places. But
there are also setbacks, as Miguel temporarily loses his baby son at the
football grounds & is thrown out by his wife Patricia (Nathalie Poza), and
Antonio ultimately fails his own psychology exam. However, it all ends
happily, as Antonio marries Macarena, & the ceremony is interrupted by a
game of soccer, the first our heroes win - albeit by massive cheating.&
after the match, at the celebration, all the couples are reconciled again:
Ramon can accept Carla's pregnancy, Patricia realizes how much she needs
Miguel, & even Violeta tells Jorge she still loves him. An
unspectacular but still immensely funny comedy, that - apart from the kitsdch
finale where all the couples are reconciled - never falls for the clichés
comedies of this kind usually fall for: This is not the story of a miserable
socc4er team that rises to fame because they have always believed in
themselves/their goals (here, they only win by massive cheating in the end,
& only one otherwise unimportant match), & Antonio hasn'T become a
successful psychologist in the end because he has fought the odds (here he
simply fails his exam because they were asking questions that were not in his
book). That the movies actors make up a first class ensemble of characters of
course helps the movie as well.
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