A giant of Mexican sketch comedy who cannot leave a line alone, Derbez has spent a decade in English-language films that mostly ask him to. The parts we have reviewed are small and stock; his reputation rests on the work he writes himself.
Fi1m perspective
Give Eugenio Derbez a line and he will add to it. Dubbing Donkey for the Latin American Spanish Shrek, he loaded the part with his own asides and local references, so that Spanish-speaking audiences got a Donkey nobody else did. It is the habit of a sketch comic, and that is what he is: decades of wordplay, physical exaggeration and eccentric recurring characters, built on television he wrote and ran himself. His English-language films have mostly asked him to put that down and stand still.
He was an extra in telenovelas from the age of twelve, in the early 1970s, and by the 1990s he was writing, performing in and directing his own series, Al Derecho y al Derbez among them. La Familia P. Luche (2002), in which he played Ludovico, ran for years and made him a leading comedy performer in Mexico. Then came Instructions Not Included (2013), which he co-wrote, directed and starred in as Valentín, in a father-and-child story. Critics noticed how easily he plays opposite children; they also found the film long and sentimental in its serious stretches, and that note has followed him since.
Hollywood is another matter. In Jack and Jill (2011) he played Felipe and Felipe's grandmother in an Adam Sandler comedy we found crude and wearying; he is neither what is wrong with it nor what is right, which for an actor of his standing at home is a strange place to be. Overboard (2018) gave him a lead as Leonardo Montenegro in a remake. Then CODA (2021), where he is Bernardo Villalobos, the choirmaster who hears something in Emilia Jones's Ruby and starts saying the word Berklee.
We wanted more from him there than the part had in it. Siân Héder writes Villalobos as a stock eccentric, all flourishes and pep talks, and his rehearsals have the shape of a montage even when they are not one; we felt the film relax every time it left the choir room for the Rossis' boat, and we did not enjoy feeling it. He plays it with the energy the part asks for. What it never asks for is anything underneath, and that is the script's failing more than his.
He adapts a broad, mannered Latin comedy style to the quieter, more naturalistic timing English-language films want. So far the trade has cost him more than it has paid: the broadness was the point of him, and the films that have hired him have not known what to do with what was left. He has said: "When people ask me for advice, I always tell them not to ask for a job, but bring a job proposal." On our evidence the advice is sound, and he should keep taking it himself.
Biography
Eugenio Derbez is a Mexican actor and comedian. He was born on 2 September 1961 in Mexico City and is the son of actress Silvia Derbez. He began appearing in telenovelas as a child and later trained in acting and film directing.
Derbez created and starred in several popular Mexican television series. In film he is known for Instructions Not Included (2013), which he wrote, directed and starred in, as well as Jack and Jill (2011) in the dual role of Felipe and Felipe's Grandma. His other credits include The Book of Life (2014), CODA (2021) and Overboard (2018). He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2016.
