You can rarely go wrong with a movie that gets 95% critical approval on Rotten Tomatoes, and that’s the case with the chosen-family-themed Bob Trevino Likes It, which has John Leguizamo in the title role. In Tracie Laymon‘s semi-autobiographical film Bob Trevino unexpectedly becomes a needed non-narcissistic father figure to the needy 20-something Lily (Barbara Ferreira, in a truly stellar performance.)
Lily is portrayed as “a young woman whose happy-go-lucky demeanor hides demons so brutal that her therapist (Ashlyn Moore) is reduced to tears during their very first session as she shares her life story. Lily has been kept under the thumb of her vindictive father, Robert (French Stewart), ever since her drug-addicted mother ran off. After a lifetime of being told how worthless she is, Lily finds it difficult to believe that she matters at all” (Ross McIndoe, Slant).
Sadie Dean, ScriptMag: “Lily and Bob’s blossoming friendship becomes a vital source of connection and healing in both their lives. Bob’s small acts of fatherly kindness fill a familial void in Lily’s life and hold the power to change her direction forever. In their own ways, these two must both learn they are worthy of extraordinary love exemplified through small acts of kindness.”
Expanding on Lily
Angie Han, Hollywood Reporter, on her first counseling session: “…(W)e hear only snippets of the backstory she lays out in rambling, rapid-fire detail. Even so, it’s evident it’s a dark one: ‘Despite what my father says, I’m pretty sure it was not all my fault,’ she says of being abandoned by her mother at age four. And it’s made only more heartbreaking by the way she presents it — with the chipper, matter-of-fact cadence of a woman who’s been carrying the pain for so long she’s become totally inured to it.”
Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: “…Lily truly is a mess. Her pain is not surface; it goes deep, and unless something changes dramatically in her self-conception, she’s going to have an unhappy life.”
Owen Gleiberman, Variety: “She’s a pathological people pleaser, to the point that she denies her own being.”
(See this recent post on people-pleasing.)
Watch the trailer:
Although therapy sessions are featured minimally, by the end there’s an important acknowledgment that the therapist‘s sobbing episode had been beyond the norm. Her being affected is one thing, overly relating to the point of losing control is another.
Selected Reviews of Bob Trevino Likes It
Oliver Jones, Observer: “The supporting players are equally strong. Rachel Bay Jones, a Tony-winner as the mom in Dear Evan Hansen, is quietly moving as Leguizamo’s wife Jeanie, who has channeled the grief of losing a young child into an all-consuming scrapbooking obsession. Actor and disability activist Lauren ‘Lolo’ Spencer plays Daphne, for whom Lily works as a live-in caregiver, with a keen sense of vulnerability around the question of where paid caregiving ends and true friendship begins.”
Kimberley Jones, Austin Chronicle: “[Writer-director Tracie] Laymon and Ferreira manage to convey Lily’s many years of trauma without bogging down in it, signaling the ways this neglected child has learned to cope, to deescalate, to take all the blame, to assume she doesn’t deserve better.”
Samantha Bergesen, Indiewire: “It’s a quiet movie, one whose tension is found in waiting to see just how far Lily and Bob will take their quasi daughter-father relationship (will Lily finally meet Bob’s wife? Will both Bobs finally cross paths?). Do we ‘like’ it? We love it.”
