R E V I E W – M O V I E
Sharika Sabha
Netflix’s latest Spanish RomCom Crazy About Her (Loco por ella in Spanish), featured cliché romance in a bizarre plot with unique messages highlighting mental health. This film, which was directed by Dani de la Orden, written by Natalia Durán and Eric Navarro, and starred by Álvaro Cervantes (as Adri) and Susana Abaitua(as Carla), got released on Netflix on 26 February 2021.
A wild one-night-stand turns out to be enough for Adri, who works at a magazine website, to fall in love with Carla. However, he doesn’t know anything about her except her name. After the fun night, all he is left with are memories of her and her jacket.
Sounds too cliché? Well, here comes the bizarre setting.
After spending days without any hope of finding her, Adri manages to find a receipt inside Carla’s jacket that brings him to a psychiatric facility. He discovers that Carla is admitted there. Finding no alternate way of contacting her, he chose to admit himself at the facility. But Carla, who suffers from bipolar disorder, doesn’t reciprocate his enthusiasm which makes Adri disheartened. He decides to leave the facility but it isn’t as easy as he thought.
Dating someone with mental instability or discovering one’s own self through wild, fun incidents can be considered a spin-off of movies like Silver Linings Playbook or Crazy/Beautiful. Be that as it may, Crazy About Her has more to it. Its plot is entirely based on the psychiatric facility and the people there with their insecurities, flaws, and illnesses. As time passes, Adri who is a completely healthy human being socialises with the patients and helps them fight their battles. The scenes of the patients growing and facing their own fears with the help of everyone are heart-warming and beautiful.
The only thing that made this cliché and bizarre movie work was the underlying messages. Throughout the movie, the concept of consent was reinstated. It further discovered multiple aspects of mental illness. Often, it is presumed that recovery from psychological instability is a personal choice that isn’t accurate. The least a partner or family member can do for these people is to have a steady presence in their lives, offering consistent help to defeat their inadequacies. One of the most impactful scenes in my opinion was when the doctor explained to Adri that the facility encourages patients to become healthy for themselves; they don’t need to act healthy to make others feel better.
Nevertheless, there are scenes that aren’t feasible which reduced the cogency of the narrative. Getting admitted to the mental health institute with the help of a fake diagnosis report is practical, but not being able to cancel the admission and the scenes surrounding it are quite far-stretched. Adri could have easily asked one of his colleagues to visit him or Carla to help him out.
Again, scenes like Carla breaching the ‘unbreakable’ security regulations without anyone’s notice or authoritative figures of the hospital following runaway patients by a car without contacting law enforcement authorities first weren’t convincing.
The character of the magazine owner was purposefully created to be hated by the audiences. However, I expected someone to stand up against him and his derogatory remarks about communities and problems. As there was nobody to protest, these scenes may influence general audiences to be neglectful and normalise this sort of insensitive behaviour.
Even though the screenplay isn’t full proof, the entire cast managed to pull it off with their acting. However, the cinematography and soundtrack were average. There weren’t sufficient scenes of comic relief for an ideal rom-com; or maybe they got lost while being translated to English.
All in all, if you are an avid generic romance or rom-com follower, this movie of 102 minutes can be a harmless addition to your watchlist. However, I can’t say the same for other viewers.
Sharika Sabha is tired of convincing people that Economics doesn’t teach you how to make money. She loves human babies, books, and submitting assignments a few minutes before the deadline. She can be reached at [email protected]