Review of Música, directed by Rudy Mancuso

I’ll have to admit, Música is a movie I initially watched because of my job. Until April 2024, when I was forced to resign after receiving news I would moving abroad to India on a Fulbright, I was a film and television critic over at MovieWeb. It was an incredible job that led me to watch movies like this, and I had the opportunity to interview Rudy and Camila Mendes.

You can find my official review and interview with the stars on the writing tab at the top of my website, where I showcase my editorial and creative work, but I genuinely loved this movie the first time I watched it. So I decided to revisit it lately, and was even willing to get ahold of an Amazon Prime Video account to do so.

This isn’t a long movie, either, so you could sneak it in during lunch breaks if you wanted to. It’s barely an hour and thirty minutes, and when I talked to Rudy, he even mentioned they had no extra content. This was the vision he had, and he actually had to be told to add more.

Anyways, I’m rambling already. Let’s get into this new mini review!

Rudy is a Brazilian-American boy just trying to get his life—and romances—together.

So in this movie, Rudy Mancuso portrays a character of the same name: Rudy. His Brazilian mother is pressuring him to go and get married to a Brazilian girl, while Rudy’s girlfriend Haley is getting increasingly annoyed at him.

She comes from a completely different world of white wealth, and when he spaces out due to his synesthesia, she calls him out for his lack of attention and then storms away. They’re on rocky waters, but everything is about to change for him when he enters a local fish shop and meets Isabella.

It’s like love at first sight when he spots Isabella, despite him getting hit by a flying fish right after. He continues to seek her out after that, ignoring how Haley is in his classes at school, and continues busking with his little puppet on the New Jersey subway system.

Whenever he’s with Isabella, everything just seems to make sense for Rudy. She understands him a way that no one else has ever done before, even when he spaces out and the world around them breaks into song. There’s a lot of singing and dancing throughout this movie, and apparently all of it was done live.

There are also moments when Rudy goes to see his friend Anwar. Anwar runs a food truck that disguises itself in whatever neighborhood he’s in. What this means is that if he is in a Jewish neighborhood, he changes everything, including himself, to reflect the tastes of the neighborhood.

Yet when Haley comes back to Rudy looking for their romance to kick back up again, Rudy makes the executive decision to date both girls at once. Even when he goes to Haley’s parent’s place and they make ignorant comments and liken him to the Latina cleaner, he still keeps doing this.

Finally, everything comes to a standstill when he has to go on a date with both girls at the same exact restaurant, at the same exact time. He runs back and forth between the tables, which are separated and not visible from each other, and everything is blown when his mom somehow ends up showing up.

Both girls find out what he is doing, and Rudy manages to lose both of them at the same time. In the end, as he gets his life together and starts getting a career as a performer, he gets a congratulatory note from Isabella.

The movie ends there, but my assumption is that they get back together.

Overall Thoughts

This is a standard romantic comedy that runs through every single trope imaginable, but I thought it was cute at the end. I didn’t want to overthink it, though, so if you’re not into something that isn’t too original, this might not be the movie for you.

The biggest charm of this movie is the Brazilian American culture and how it spotlights how vibrant it is. I absolutely loved how it incorporates the language, dance, and food in a way that doesn’t other the culture or try to explain it in depth to an audience that doesn’t understand. It just exists as it is, which is perfect.

The depictions of Rudy’s condition was also well done. This is where dance and song come in, as he interprets the world through music. As he struggles with his story and coming of age, it feels real as well.

Go watch this one if you haven’t already. It’s not revolutionary, but it’s pretty decent.

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