Promedio rojo

Being a little freak, introspective, somewhat fat and a huge fan of Star Wars and comics might render you unattractive for the vast majority of the popular girls in your college.

Roberto Rodriguez is the perfect prototype of a fat freaky looser, and he can live with it, until a new female student arrives into his class. She's an adorable Spanish brunette who also likes comics books, and Roberto falls for her instantaneously.

The problem is that she's quickly drained towards Fele, an older student who is the perfect handsome heart breaker, forcing Roberto to attempt desperately and pathetically to get her to notice him.

I think this movie might be a little autobiographic for Nicolas Lopez, Director, Script Writer and co-producer of Promedio Rojo. And might as well have many similarities with the lives of a lot of young men who hadn't it easy during high school, being unnoticed or unattractive to girls, hanging out with freaky friends, having little or no social life and having to survive the cruelty and rudeness of popular students.

Altought the film has some dramatic ingredients, it's by no means a melodrama. I think this is plain comedy, but a rather sarcastic one. You might find yourself laughing at things that you know that are full of bad taste or even plain gross... and those situations wouldn't be funny if presented in another context, but in this movie it works, and it works well.

There are some petty side conflicts which really aren't important nor funny, but all in all the movie is entertaining, funny and has enjoyable characters.

And I declare myself absolutely in love for Cristina, the Spanish student.

I saw promedio rojo with very low expectations (may be that's why I liked it). When I saw this movie, I first thought it was going to be the typical teen movie with the nerdy kid getting the good looking girl at the end. But instead I got Nicolas Lopes crazy world. What I really like about this movie is that the set up is basically a comic about the main character, which gives more freedom to switch from the characters imagination and reality. Also I liked how it poked fun of every teen movie, and also other big Hollywood hits (star wars, lion king, etc). Unlike every teen movie, the ending is not a happy one, and it leaves the viewer waiting to see what's going to happened. I really enjoyed this movie, and I recommend it to anyone.

Believe it or not this movie did great here in Chile, it's original and very different from most of the movies Chile has done. I think the main problem with this movie is that is made for Chileans. This movie says a lot about our culture, it has our sense of humor and I doubt someone from any other country (except maybe countries closer to Chile like Argentina) would really understand what is about and what the movie says about us. It's not Oscar worthy, but it stands out from most of our movies. It's well done, it's light, it's funny because it shows a lot of characters we recognize in today's society here.

To say Chileans should be embarrassed about this movie is and insult not just to me, but for our entire country, and it's completely out of line. Most of the movies made in the USA are dumb or crappy, but you can't blame that on the WHOLE country, usually you blame it on the director, or the cast, or the idea was bad, etc.

This movie was the big hype of 2004 in Chile. The director visited almost every mass media he could to promote the film, even 3 months before its release on theaters. With this, the film had an amazing start at box offices, everybody went saying it was a big success. But let the truth be said now. The movie is awful. Director Nicolas Lopez portrays himself as the main character, a complete nerdy loser who is the object of rejection of everybody at school, the daddy boy of the class beats him, the new Spanish beauty almost ignores him. Everything goes bad for him. Director Lopez tried to imitate the style popularized by Spanish director Alex De la Iglesia, but tried to transplant it to Chilean idiosyncrasy. The result could have been much better if he had had a good script. Some superb Chilean actors as Fernando Farias, Ernesto Belloni and Kathy Kowaleczko are absolutely wasted here, given them such minimum characters which weren't properly developed. The result is a complete mess which is not funny nor entertaining. After this movie, seems very difficult for Lopez to get some new high budget to make a mainstream movie (this one cost more than a million dollar), so it seems he will be condemned to return to his infra cult circuit where he was born and probably will remain there for the rest of his movie director life.

I am sorry but this is on the top 5 list of the worst movies ever. A complete apology to bad taste, lack of redeeming values, or to any values (including entertainment values for that matter). The acting is over the top, the references to many movies, (meet Joe Black, High Times in Richmond High, Some Kind of wonderful) and to styles and directors (Alex de la Iglesia, Kevin Smith) are somehow pathetic. I have seen some really good chilean movies in the last decade but this one is that kind of movie that will leave you mad for having wasted almost two hours of your life for watching it. Avoid it at all costs. It is that bad.