Summary
Spanish Netflix film 4 latas had all the potential to be a pleasurable road trip story, but it resides itself into the miserableness of a failing journey.
Spanish Netflix film 4 latas prompted a memory of mine when I went on a road trip in the South of France. It was terrible. Not only was the drive absurdly lengthy, but at the time, my sister was a toddler. Each cry compounded the dry mouth and sweat I was experiencing with each second. My point being, road trips are often sold as a way of bringing people together, so by that, I presume that regular road trips are fun.
4 latas is not fun for the characters. The premise; Tocho, Jean Pierre and Ely travel from Spain to Mali to meet Ely’s dying father one last time. They are encouraged not to go by plane but to travel employing a vehicle that stands the test of a desert. Ely has her father’s old car that they used to do road trips in, and behold we have a movie.
But the Spanish Netflix film is odd. The end goal is to reach Ely’s dying father, yet it spends an exuberant amount of time trying to add comedy into an extremely long, and joyless road trip that only seems to get worse. There’s history with each character, especially with Ely who has not seen her father for years, but the film eventually sucks the life out of the character development and resorts to making the journey as hellish for the characters as possible.
The journey and the exhausting experiences are enjoyable to witness, but 4 latas is sold as a comedy/drama. It dabbles around the plot points like it fears to breach the surface of the story, and seems ultimately relaxed remaining in a stale position for all three acts. It’s easy to wonder what Gerardo Olivares had in mind for the Netflix film.
If you like a road trip narrative, then it’s possible you will embrace Spanish Netflix film 4 latas, but it does make the exploitative plot points somehow difficult to scrummage around. I was quite disappointed.
