Summary
Welcome to Acapulco is a hell of a lot of fun, and even though the concept wears thin, it will keep you at least entertained.
Welcome to Acapulco follows Matt Booth (Michael Kingsbaker), a video game programmer who is about to seal the most momentous deal of his life after putting the final touches to a game. His friend insists he needs to get to New Mexico as soon as possible to meet the potential bidders. At the airport, he bumps into an old friend, and they drink relentlessly in the VIP lounge. Matt ends up in “actual” Mexico, in a place called Acapulco, and the CIA and a group of criminals are after him because he holds the “package”.
Now as a premise, Welcome to Acapulco sounds like your run-of-the-mill throwaway action thriller that involves a vulnerable young man caught up in some corrupt scheme. But actually, what you are given is a copycat of the Deadpool type narration that drives the story forward. The film relies on Matt’s voice throughout, as he explains every single major plot point, and throws in the odd amusing joke exactly as the superhero does.
Welcome to Acapulco may deny that they got the idea from the comic-book hero, but remove the suit, the kick-ass super strength, and the regeneration, and you have a normal everyday, generic-looking man called Matt that tells his own story and obsesses with the woman Adriana Vazquez (Ana Serradilla) who is trying to save him. She’s kind of a badass, beautiful femme fatale that channels his inner video game action hero geekiness throughout the film.
I enjoyed Welcome to Acapulco – it’s difficult not to enjoy a character that amuses himself in his downfall and narrates his own story. If you could imagine this movie without the narration then all director Guillermo Iván would have done is create an average action-movie with predictable story arcs about a blubbering video game geek. The funniest parts are when Matt doesn’t know what the fuck is going on, and he frustratingly questions what the package is, which is the entire theme of the movie.
The narrative concept does wear a little thin in Welcome to Acapulco. After a while, the video game type elements, mixed with Matt’s nerdy voice, starts to feel repetitive and overdone, almost like the writers wanted to rely more on that aspect than the story itself. It’s by far not the best film of 2019, but Welcome to Acapulco is meant to be a joyful feature, mixed with some entertaining violence for good measure.
