Review: LA PRIMA, An Early Candidate for Worst Mexican Movie of 2018

In this age of political correctness and the countless sex scandals that have emerged from Hollywood, a comedy like La prima will be definitely criticized for its undeniable connection to the so-called Mexican “sexy comedies” from a different era.

The director, Víctor Ugalde, actually made sex comedies back in the eighties, such as La lechería and Para que dure no se apure, and now with La prima he's never shy to almost always put the camera towards the voluptuous women’s tits, asses and legs.

The emerging main actress, Natasha Esca, offers an exhibition of sexy lingerie, while former Playmate Isabel Madow has a small and quite insignificant role, though it’s fair to say that there’s actually no nudity in the movie.

In the end, it’s sort of like a soft version of an old-school sexy comedy that, at least for me, is way more offensive for other reasons, such as its mess of a plot, the moments that make it feel like a soap opera, and just its general stupidity.

At its core, La prima is quite simply - and why the fuck not? - about a young married woman (Esca) who begins an affair with her own cousin (Mark Tacher), while her much older husband (Jesús Ochoa) is away “working” in Europe. Minus the incest, it all seems like a conventional story of love and betrayal, but if La prima is really an early candidate for the worst Mexican picture of the year, there must be something else. Let’s see…

We have famous Mexican actor Jesús Ochoa doing what has to be his laziest performance ever: he practically just had to wear a wig and pose for some laughable photomontages, used every time the movie needs to remind us that he's enjoying his time in Europe. Well, Ochoa’s character actually does something else before leaving Mexico, when he buys a laptop for his wife, which leads to the next point.

The female protagonist is portrayed as a person dumb enough that she needs another older man (Julio Bracho) that will “teach" her how to use said computer. Because the plot usually makes no fucking sense, the “computer master” turns out to be a piano master as well, and of course he falls for the young girl, though she will have other (incestuous) plans once her cousin - who she hasn’t seen since they were kids - appears out of nowhere and ready to do nothing else but bang her; sorry, the film itself is tasteless, plain and simple.

The cousins are sometimes hesitant to continue with their affair, but other times they just fuck in public at a graveyard. To expect some coherence from the script at this point was clearly useless, so let’s just say La prima also features a whole bunch of totally unnecessary minor characters and subplots, with renowned actors like Angélica Aragón, Sergio Klainer and Ernesto Gómez Cruz.

At least María Rojo’s role as the protagonist’s vengeful cleaning lady is important to the central incestuous plot, but her agenda leads us to fart jokes (just what we needed!) and to a bizarre outcome that solves everything with a few accidental deaths. At this stage, some sign of rationality would have been the shocking thing.