Metacritic Film

Y Tu Mamá También

Starring Maribel Verdú, Gael García Bernal, Diego Luna, Diana Bracho, Emilio Echevarría, Ana López Mercado, María Aura, and Andrés Almeida

MPAA RATING: Not Rated

IFC Films
Romance
105 minutes | Color
Mexico / USA
Released In Theaters March 15, 2002

Abandoned by their girlfriends for the summer, two rich teenagers meet an exotic older woman at a wedding and end up on a road trip together.

WRITTEN BY
Alfonso Cuarón
Carlos Cuarón

DIRECTED BY
Alfonso Cuarón

Overall Metascore

This is a weighted, normalized average of all individual scores given by critics, on a scale of 0 (worst) to 100 (best).

88 / 100

Critic Reviews

100 Chicago Sun-Times
One of those movies where "after that summer, nothing would ever be the same again." Yes, but it redefines "nothing."
100 Philadelphia Inquirer
That rare thing, a Hollywood teen flick transfigured into something like pubescent scripture: In the beginning, there was lust; in the end, there is knowledge.
100 USA Today
Can be taken on many levels, and that's why it works so completely.
100 Baltimore Sun
A great, lusty movie in the tradition of Bertrand Blier's "Going Places."
100 Los Angeles Times
Echoes the unmistakable freshness and excitement of the Nouvelle Vague, the sense of joy in being alive and making movies, that made those works distinctive and unforgettable.
100 San Francisco Chronicle Carla Meyer
Frank, funny and true as "Ghost World."
100 Washington Post Ann Hornaday
Part travelogue, part road picture, part meditation on class, mortality and intimacy, this extraordinary little movie might be the perfect harbinger of summer, as astute as it is steamy.
100 Chicago Tribune
Raunchy, smart, ebullient, melancholy, insightful, surprising, funny, frank and sexy as all get-out.
100 Portland Oregonian
Teems with pot smoke, body parts and profane outbursts -- you ride a giggly wave throughout, jokes and turn-ons and shocking sights alternating in buoyant fashion.
100 Rolling Stone
Cuaron's hot-blooded, haunting and wildly erotic film revels in the pleasures of the flesh without losing touch with thought and feeling.
100 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
A vivid, thoughtful, unapologetically raw coming-of-age tale full of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll.
100 Salon.com
One of the most joyous movies I've ever seen, and one of the handful of great erotic films the movies have given us.
100 Washington Post
There are so many good things to say about this film it's hard to find a statement that really nails it. Perhaps we can leave at this: Y Tu Mama Tambien is originality writ large.
100 Entertainment Weekly
Sad, funny, sexy, and altogether marvelous.
100 Wall Street Journal
Give yourself away to this movie and you'll be glad you did.
90 Slate
It's the way Cuarón demonstrates how a simple teen comedy can suddenly blossom into a study of sexual mores, a Mexican political allegory, a song of lamentation -- and still be breezy and funny and sexy as hell.
90 Chicago Reader
A genuine rarity: a sex comedy with brains.
90 The New York Times
Director Alfonso Cuarón works with a quicksilver fluidity, and the movie is fast, funny, unafraid of sexuality and finally devastating.
90 New York Magazine
The funniest and most emotionally charged erotic road movie since Bertrand Blier's "Going Places."
90 Newsweek
The eroticism in Cuaron’s road movie (which broke all box-office records in Mexico) is the real deal: tactile, sexy, psychologically charged.
88 Miami Herald
Unabashedly frank in its depiction of sex -- too frank, probably, for more discreet viewers -- but it's never exploitive or seedy.
88 New York Daily News
Like watching an American teen-sex comedy through a glass darkly.
88 The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
"You're so lucky to live in Mexico," Luisa says. "Look at it -- it breathes with life." So does Y Tu Mama Tambien, both the pant of passion and shuddering sigh of regret.
88 Boston Globe Jonathan Perry
Sensual, funny, and moving film.
80 The Onion (A.V. Club)
In the wild and consistently surprising Y Tu Mamá También, anything isn't the half of it.
80 Time
If this sounds like an old-fashioned sex comedy, it is -- sexy, for sure, and funny, in wild spurts.
80 New Times (L.A.)
In elevating bawdy teen farce to political metaphor without squeezing the fun out, Alfonso Cuarón has pulled off a nice little miracle.
75 New York Post
Director Alfonso Cuaron ("A Little Princess") gets vivid, convincing performances from a fine cast, and generally keeps things going at a rapid pace.
70 The New Yorker
There is plenty to inflame in this picture and nothing to corrupt. [18 Mar 2002. p.152]
70 TV Guide
For what could easily have been a slickly vulgar variation on "American Pie" or "Porky's", this libidinous comedy explores some unusually complicated territory, and benefits greatly from Verdú's unpredictable performance as Luisa.
70 Village Voice
It has the charm of the original American road movies, feasting on the gorgeous, ramshackle landscape of the filmmaker's motherland.
63 ReelViews
It's often diverting and occasionally funny, but it's ultimately inconsequential.
60 Film Threat Bradley Gibson
The story is set in real world Mexico, not a cleaned-up movie world simulacrum.
50 Christian Science Monitor
Too much repetition and an unconvincing finale take a toll on the film's overall effectiveness.
40 Variety Leonardo Garcia Tsao
The film's biggest limitation is its oversexed, underdeveloped male duo. Playing like a south-of-the-border version of Beavis and Butt-head, the teenagers have but one thought in their heads.

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