The intimate movie hums with a back-in-the-hood vibe that gets the two stars playing contentedly, and delightfully, for the love of local filmmaking.

Mr. Cuarón directs with a hand that's as sure as it is deft. The music is terrific, though I can't say the same for the fusty subtitles, and Adam Kimmel's cinematography bathes the movie's cheerful absurdities in a beautiful glow.

Mexico has had its share of debilitating transnational news lately, but the arrival of the puckishly entertaining, fleet-of-foot drama-comedy Rudo y Cursi deserves a hearty welcome.

Hilarious, satirical and melancholy, Rudo y Cursi may not go as deep as "Y Tu Mamá También," but it has a similar vivacity. It turns this tale of brotherly bonds and sibling rivalry--a veiled allegory of the Cuarón boys themselves?--into one of the year's most memorable offerings.

Rudo y Cursi is as fatalistic as any film noir, but it's played for cartoonish screwball comedy. At once smooth and frantic, filled with cozy clutter and vulgar jive, the movie subsumes its moralizing in frat-house entertainment.

That the fantasy comes crashing back to earth seems all but inevitable. That Rudo y Cursi doesn't crash in the process - that's muy bien.

Fierce, profane and hilarious comedy.

Carlos Cuaron's otherwise terrific new comedy Rudo Y Cursi barely survives its third-act "Goodfellas" descent into seedy coke-and-crime drama.

Luna and García Bernal display the kind of chemistry that makes you overlook the clichés in the script by first-time director Carlos Cuarón. Sometimes good-natured fun is enough.

Rudo y Cursi (which roughly translates to tough and corny) is more raucous and slight than the contemplative "Y Tu Mama," but it is an undeniably entertaining rags-to-riches-to-rags comedy.

The rags-to-riches-to-rags trajectory is shopworn, but the sibling rivalries are cantankerous and goofy and Bernal's Tato, who fancies himself a pop singing star, wouldn't make the first cut on "American Idol."

This is not a deep movie, but it's a broad one. It reunites three talents who had an enormous hit with "Y Tu Mama Tambien": actors Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna, and Carlos Cuaron, who wrote that film and writes and directs this one. Instead of trying to top themselves with life and poignancy, they wisely do something for fun.

Rudo y Cursi is a grave and calculated affront to the men of Mexico, and that's the source of its roistering charm.

It's a film that gently spoofs such cultural staples as ranchera music, illegal gambling, labor exploitation and tabloid media. And it's the sort of film that sneaks serious themes and emotions in just when you think it's about to dissolve into farce. Small but largely satisfying.