Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Playing the Latin lover for laughs
Eugenio Derbez has dominated Mexican television comedy for decades. His 2013 feature “Instructions Not Included,” which he directed and produced as well as starred in, is the highestgrossing Spanish language film of all time in the U.S. and worldwide, with total ticket sales just shy of $100 million.
So it’s no surprise that the 54-year-old funnyman’s next move would be to make a movie in Hollywood, in about three-quarters English. In “How to Be a Latin Lover,” Derbez also performs the moves of an aging gigolo, much to the bemusement of women he mistakes for potential conquests (played by the likes of Kristen Bell and Raquel Welch) and disgust of his long-suffering sister (Salma Hayek, a friend of Derbez’s since way back in her Mexican TV days, working with him here for the first time).
It’s the first project developed by Derbez’s American production company, 3Pas Studios, and marks the feature-directing debut of actor Ken Marino. The English-fluent Derbez was reluctant to call the shots on his initial star vehicle in a second language, but it still represents his urge to generate his own Hollywood product.
“I discovered many years ago in my country that, when you’re an actor and don’t develop your own material, you need to accept what they offer you,” says the friendly, thoughtful Derbez, wearing a sharp blue jacket with subtle white trimming. “Sometimes in my case, especially here in the United States, I was tired of always having a small role in movies and always the drug lord or dealer, a criminal or whatever, or the gardener.
“Everything happened because my last movie did great and opened a lot of doors to me, so I started this company and I started developing scripts,” the now-Los Angeles resident continues. “‘Latin Lover’ was something I always wanted to do because I think that it’s a great stereotype, and the only way to break down stereotypes is by making fun of them. So we decided to make a joke of an aging Latin lover, and we got a funny script.”
Chris Spain and Jon Zack’s screenplay is mostly funny at Derbez’s expense. Forced to seek new, um, employment after his longtime sugar mama (Renee Taylor) replaces him in her Beverly Hills mansion with a younger man, his pampered Maximo goes through a series of demeaning jobs while trying to seduce another rich widow, Welch’s Celeste. The trim, youthfullooking Derbez let his hair gray and put on weight to give Maximo a pronounced paunch, all for his art, until the day he had to shoot a poolside scene with the ‘60s poster queen.
“You can’t imagine,” he ruefully recalls.”The director wanted me with a big belly, so I started eating a lot five months earlier. You can’t imagine how embarrassing it was for me to wear that small, yellow Speedo. The day we were shooting that scene, Raquel was coming to set. I had a huge crush on her, and I wanted to meet her, but not in that Speedo! They were like, ‘Raquel is here,’ and I was ‘No, no, no, please, not like this!’ I felt really uncomfortable and exposed.” He needn’t have worried. “I do recall he had those little Speedos on, but then he put a robe on,” Welch, still as glamorous as when she rocked a fur cave-girl bikini on millions of adolescents’ walls, recalls. “He was charming. He was very gallant, you know? And he has beautiful manners.
“And I told him the other day that he’s too skinny,” Welch adds. “I said, ‘What happened? Half of you is gone!’ “
Welch was hardly the first Latina superstar who left her imprint on Derbez. His mother, Silvia, was a big name in Mexican telenovelas and before that appeared in movies ranging from “Tarzan and the Mermaids” to Luis Bunuel’s “The River and Death.”
“She was the soap opera queen in Latin America,” Derbez says. “I fell in love with this career because of her. She was amazing to watch work; legend has it she was able to cry with a different eye depending on where the camera was. She was so natural and into it, but despite always crying she was such a happy woman. She always complained that she was really funny, but they kept making her cry.”
Eugenio loved accompanying Silvia to the studio whenever he had a day off from school and snuck in as an extra on her shows if at all possible.
“I fell in love with the career by watching my mom and going with her to the set,” he confirms. “I don’t know if I would be a comedian or an actor if my mom would have been a lawyer or something else. I might have ended up a comedian, but I’m not sure. I probably would be the frustrated, funny guy at parties telling jokes.”
Since “Instructions,” Derbez has appeared in several American shows, including the movie “Miracles From Heaven” and Adam Sandler’s Netflix production “Sandy Wexler.” His company’s next American project is a gender role-reversed remake of the 1987 romantic comedy “Overboard,” with him playing the Goldie Hawn part and Anna Faris in the Kurt Russell part.
All of which, technically, makes him a pretty industrious immigrant. But with many of his fellow Mexicans facing deportation these days, Derbez is quick to point out that most of them are, too.
“When we Mexicans come here, we see that all the Latinos are hard-working people,” he says. “They come here because they are tired of a country that won’t give them good opportunities, so when they come here they really work hard.
“Of course, there are some out there that are bad guys,” Derbez acknowledges, “but that’s always the case, with any group. Most of the Latinos came here to really work and they’re very respectful. Mexicans come here and they are so, so well-behaved, whereas in Mexico they might break some law in the streets or whatever. Here, though, it’s not your country, so you take care of it. So it breaks my heart when these hardworking people are being torn apart from their families just because they were born there.”
Contact Bob Strauss at rstrauss@scng.com or @ bscritic on Twitter.