A stand-up who talks about money, family and the Texas border, and whose one substantial film part, the trainer Cruz Ramirez in Cars 3, is the best thing in it. The films have so far given her little else to do.
Fi1m perspective
Cruz Ramirez arrives in Cars 3 (2017) as a trainer who speaks in motivational slogans, calls Lightning her senior project and treats him like a man being eased towards a bungalow. Cristela Alonzo plays the brightness as armour rather than as a joke, so the cheer is something Cruz is doing to herself as much as to him, and when the film at last lets her say what she wants, the scene is the best-written in it. We were more moved than a film about talking cars had any right to make us, and the reason is plain: Alonzo had spent an hour selling the slogans, so the ordinary sentence underneath them landed as a confession. It is one voice part in a sequel we found kind, handsome and dull, and it is the reason to stay.
That is the whole of her substantial film work so far. Alonzo is a stand-up first. She began after a spell as office manager at a Dallas comedy club, wrote for Mind of Mencia (2006) and worked the college circuit. In 2014 she created, wrote, produced and led Cristela, a network sitcom drawn from her own family and the first primetime network comedy made by a Mexican-American woman. It ran for one season of 22 episodes. The multi-camera format and the writing around her were widely found generic, and we would not argue; the show had a performer and no clear idea what to do with her.
The specials are where she is most herself. Lower Classy (2017), Middle Classy (2022) and Upper Classy (2025) make a trilogy about money in a Texas border town and about the move from poverty to something safer. The material is class, immigration and family, told as observation rather than sermon. Some critics find her too amiable, warmer than she is sharp, and there is something in that. Pixar built parts of her own life into Cruz, which is why the character sounds like a person.
The live-action films have not caught up. In The Laundromat (2019) she is Special Agent Kilmer, a walk-on in Soderbergh's talking-to-camera revue, and our own review found no cause to mention her, which is a fair measure of the part. Hester in His Dark Materials (2019–2022) is another voice job, and voice jobs have so far suited the films' idea of her better than faces have. What Cruz Ramirez showed is a comic who can drop the act on cue and be believed. Somebody will have to write her a part that asks for it, and on past form she may have to be the somebody.
Biography
Cristela Alonzo is an American stand-up comedian, actress, writer and producer. She was born on 6 January 1979 in Hidalgo, Texas.
Alonzo created and starred in the ABC sitcom Cristela (2014–2015), becoming the first Mexican American woman to create, produce, write and star in her own US network show. She has voiced characters including Cruz Ramirez in Cars 3 (2017) and its spin-offs, Shirley in The Angry Birds Movie (2016), and Hester in His Dark Materials (2019). Her film roles include Special Agent Kilmer in The Laundromat (2019).
