Dramatically, this movie is all over the map. It’s a sentimental story, interrupted with slapstick comedy, solemn references to American racism, knowing familial strife and shattered dreams. It really ought to be much darker than it is, because much of the story is played for laughs. Having North America’s cutest goat along for the ride helps.

Luke Greenfield’s film is centered on Renato (Luis Gerardo Méndez), who reluctantly travels from Mexico to Chicago to see his dying father Flavio (Juan Pablo Espinosa), who deserted his family when Renato was young. Renato learns that he has an American half brother, Asher (Connor Del Rio), and that his father has designed a kind of scavenger hunt across the South to allow the brothers to learn about Flavio and why he made the decisions he did. Renato and Asher take to the road and have all sorts of adventures before coming to terms with their father’s past, and each other.

Logic just doesn’t work with this kind of story; it makes no sense for the dying Flavio to send his boys out on the road, but that’s what he does, and of course the trip is going to be good for them, no matter how wild and woolly it gets. And it does get strange, and dangerous, and strangely fulfilling. I have to admit that even as I shook my head at the lunacy of it all I did appreciate the sentimental side of Flavio’s story, as well as the darker aspects of the immigrant experience in America which Flavio, and then Renato, witness. It seems to me that there is a great deal of truth in this story, sometimes buried beneath its goofiness.

Because it is effective at times, especially when Juan Pablo Espinosa (Flavio) is onscreen, I almost want to recommend it. This film has a lot to say about family and reconciliation and forgiveness, and it tries to sweeten its message with all the comic mayhem and the cute goat. I’ll probably never see it again, but I’m not sorry I did. ☆ ☆ 1/2. 16 December 2020.