On the day I saw Pulling Strings, I couldn’t come up with the title after the fact. I had to look it up when I logged it into my spreadsheet. I had to look it up when I made the shell for this post. I had to look it up again when I started writing this post and you can bet for sure I’ll have to look it up again to answer any specific questions about this film should there ever be any. There won’t. Forgettable is the word. It isn’t funny, smart or controversial. It isn’t unique; it doesn’t have much to say. This bland offering is only recommended to the most desperate of audiences.
Flirting with the Mexican theme of the year, Alejandro (Jaime Camil) is a single father trying to do right. In his head is an idea that his best move is sending his grade-school kid to Arizona. I’d be hard pressed to find anybody who can back the idea of a best move being to send somebody to Arizona. Nevertheless, Alex vies for a travel visa without ID or proper paperwork establishing residence, income, or plain existence. He does have a CD with his picture on it and a copy of his handwritten apartment rental contract. Are we actually supposed to be offend when he’s denied a visa? I wouldn’t expect to get into Mexico with that kind of documentation, would you?
As luck would have it, Rachel (Laura Ramsey), the woman who denied him the visa — and wouldn’t be able to pick Al out of a lineup of farm animals, just happens to be passed out drunk at a bus stop in Mexico City. Say, do you think it’s worse being able to read a bad plot coming or having to see it play out? I think I could argue either way. Al plays host/chauffeur/manservant to Rachel for the next 
few days while they look for a “lost” laptop ensured to her. The laptop is in Al’s apartment — pretty nice apartment for a single father with a mariachi income and a handwritten contract, just sayin’ — he found it and realized the machine could be used as leverage while he wins Rachel over. Yeah, that’s not gonna end badly.
Ok, so if you’re not offended by the idiot plot … or the huge lie Alex is telling … or the fact that all his friends know he’s into the mob for tuition money, but they still abuse his vulnerability … or the fact that we’re setting up a situation in which a Mexican is voluntarily subservient to an American for no good reason .. well, if you can take all that without blinking, the film is relatively watchable. With Alejandro constantly singing with his mariachi band, Pulling Strings starts resembling a Bollywood comedy: Bad plot, bad joke, song; bad plot, bad joke, song, etc. Eh, you can do worse.
Do you remember the Onion article “Harsh Light Of Morning Falls On One-Night Stand’s DVD Collection?” The only thing that stops Pulling Strings from being added to that who’s-who? of mediocrity is accessibility. This film won’t get name recognition beyond the writing of this sentence. Nor should it. What was I talking about?
Trying to secure a visa
Without all the papers he needs, ya
Al has a coup
A woman to woo
A lie is never gonna please-a
Rated PG, 111 Minutes
D: Pedro Pablo Ibarra
W: Issa López, Georgina Riedel,Gabriel Ripstein, Oscar Orlando Torres
Genre: What’s Spanish for “bland?”
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Those desperate to see Instructions Not Included again
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: People who appreciate memory
