Mesa de regalos

Nicolás and Antonia have been friends a long time. Both are in their thirties and neither life has settled; the work is uncertain, there is no money and their relationships keep breaking off. Everyone around them is getting married. Every wedding needs a present and the registries are expensive. They have an idea: they will pretend to be engaged and open a registry of their own. The guests will buy the presents, the two will turn the goods into money, and there will be no wedding. The plan works. Then something changes between them. Noé Santillán-López directs. José Eduardo Derbez and Cassandra Sánchez Navarro are in the cast. It is a Mexican production. The form is romantic comedy and the narrative follows the known shape of the genre. The humour is built on economic circumstance; the cost of weddings, gift registries and the expectations of a circle of friends are taken up directly. Mainstream Mexican comedies find a wide audience in this period and this belongs to that line. The matter it treats is not meeting expectations in your thirties; the narrative gives that not as a crisis but as a fact. Its limit is predictability; where the two are going is clear from the first scene. The supporting characters stay formulaic and the wedding scenes repeat. Who it is for: viewers who like Latin American romantic comedy. Who it is not for: the plot is familiar, the humour light, and the ending what you expect.