In an age when we all get daily inundations of text message invites from strangers with weird area codes (“Do you have plans for tomorrow? Have dinner together?”), it’s almost impossible to imagine a time when such a request could be innocent and well-meaning rather than a nefarious attempt to hollow your bank account.
BOB TREVINO LIKES IT ★★★ (3/4 stars)
Directed by: Tracie Laymon
Written by: Tracie Laymon
Starring: Barbie Ferreira, John Leguizamo, French Stewart, Rachel Bay Jones, Lauren ‘Lolo’ Spencer
Running time: 102 mins.
Bob Trevino Likes It, the feature film debut from award-winning short film and web series director Tracie Laymon, wistfully and powerfully recaptures a more guileless era in our digital lives—which the Facebook interface and the lead character’s cracked second-gen iPhone put at around 2010.
The phone was the same one used by Laymon during that period, and the movie is filled with moments that would be hard to believe had they not actually happened to the Texas-born filmmaker. But what really allows this throwback indie to pop with vitality is the emotional honesty brought to bear by its remarkable group of actors.
The cast is co-headed by John Leguizamo, a Tony and Emmy Award winner who has notched over one hundred film credits since debuting as an extra in Madonna’s “Borderline” video, and Barbie Ferreira, a model and influencer who starred in the first two seasons of HBO’s Euphoria. As evidenced by the emotional acuity she shows in her first starring role, Ferreira has a long, Leguizamo-like career trajectory in front of her.
Be prepared for an old school, two-hanky weeper—yes, for much of the audience, but more pointedly for Ferreira.
As Lily, Ferreira kicks off and concludes the film with scenes of full-on ugly crying—and there’s a doozy in the middle that takes place at a dog shelter. These set-ups border on manipulative (expect to spend the early part of the film wishing this young woman demonstrated some agency), but Ferreira’s emotional fireworks are deeply grounded, and keep the film on track even when it loses momentum as her character makes increasingly more questionable decisions.
Leguizamo plays the title character, a construction manager from Southern Indiana to whom Lily sends a Facebook friend request because he shares a name with her father, a narcissist skinflint who periodically locks his daughter out of his orbit when she dampens his dating life. (“Bad” Bob Trevino is imbued with such virulent self-obsession by sitcom actor French Stewart that you’ll feel the need to check in with friends with similarly toxic dads as soon as you leave the theater.)
It’s remarkable to witness Leguizamo’s legendary motormouth locked in neutral as he listens to, observes and empathizes with someone who has never experienced that level of compassion. (Ferreira is the resident speed talker in this two-hander.) Leguizamo’s quietude and stillness is every bit as mesmerizing to watch as his loquacious dynamism was when he set the New York theater world on its ear three decades ago, and when he does offer Lily occasional words of encouragement, it’s in a vowel perfect Hoosier twang.
The supporting players are equally strong. Rachel Bay Jones, a Tony-winner as the mom in Dear Evan Hansen, is quietly moving as Leguizamo’s wife Jeanie, who has channeled the grief of losing a young child into an all-consuming scrapbooking obsession. Actor and disability activist Lauren “Lolo” Spencer plays Daphne, for whom Lily works as a live-in caregiver, with a keen sense of vulnerability around the question of where paid caregiving ends and true friendship begins.
This is indeed Laymon’s secret weapon as writer-director: she may be making a film about one very unusual friendship, but she is equally invested in the power of the other relationships on screen. The space between her characters crackle with an unexpected and surprising energy, a quality that becomes all the more needed as the plot ventures into the predictable.
In doing so, Laymon has crafted a love letter to a forgotten golden age when social media was a foundry forging bright and unusual bonds between lost souls, rather than what it has become today: a fire pit that stokes resentment and misinformation. With that time feeling as distant to us now as the age of the steam engine, to have it be brought back with emotional depth and elegant precision is a small but necessary gift.
