¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor! (2024) review

Dir. Arthur Bradford

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★★

You’d be hard-pressed to find a South Park fan who doesn’t admit that “Casa Bonita” is one of the series’ finest episodes. On top of some exquisitely hilarious plot developments, such as Cartman’s fanatical obsession with the titular Denver restaurant and Butters being locked in a bomb shelter, it’s clearly an episode made by two men who loved their hometown touchstone. Those same men are quick to point out the restaurant’s foibles and merely decent food, but the episode as a whole is nonetheless an ode to childhood nostalgia and those irreplaceable nights out with family.

So, when the real Casa Bonita was thought to have closed permanently due to the COVID-19 pandemic and its parent company’s lofty debt, those men, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park, decided to purchase and revive the restaurant. Upon opening in 1973, Casa Bonita was billed as “the Disneyland of Mexican restaurants.” It was a categorically absurd venture that replicated 19th-century Acapulco. Its exterior tower, reminiscent of a city courthouse, was painted bubblegum pink, and inside was a cross between Chuck E. Cheese and a casino. Cliff divers, a Mariachi band, treasure, Black Bart’s Cave, puppet shows, and more served as complementary fun to all the tacos and burritos you could stomach.

So, when one of Colorado’s most popular tourist destinations was ostensibly going to succumb to rot and decay, Parker and Stone ponied up a couple million and budgeted roughly $6.5 million to rehab and reopen the generational staple. ¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor! documents this ill-advised venture that sees the duo going over six-times the original budget as they rescue an actively crumbling landmark that, upon being acquired by a corporation, saw very little in the way of repairs over the course of decades. When you see a closer look of how the cliff divers were supposed to swim underwater and through a tight crevasse of rocks, electrical equipment, and PVC pipe in order to reemerge to safety, you’ll wonder how this place didn’t become the second coming of Action Park in New Jersey.

Even if you didn’t experience Casa Bonita as a child and lack the gauzy memories that make Parker’s eyes moisten and heart swell, one of the many thrills of ¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor! is seeing the guts and innerworkings of a place designed to be a safe haven of fun for kids and adults alike. A lot goes into manufacturing fun, and much of it isn’t fun at all. Though it might not be a surprise that installing a completely new HVAC system, a functional pool, and various other mechanical devices inside a 52,000-square-foot establishment isn’t cheap nor enjoyable, it’s fascinating to watch the process of reinventing a completely unconventional building into something that simultaneously honors the past and sets the table for a new multi-decade existence.

Beyond the millions they poor into the parts of the restaurant “nobody will see,” director Arthur Bradford — responsible for the phenomenal short-doc 6 Days to Air, which chronicled the production of a single episode of South Park — spends ample time covering the “fun” aspects of the restaurant. Those include the casting of its notable band of misfits, the details of the animatronics (wouldn’t it be funny if the fortune teller wore a Farrah Fawcett shirt, recalling the era in which the restaurant first opened?), and Parker’s creative process.

Even as the stress of the project starts to consume Parker — Stone has all the hallmarks of a great collaborative partner, knowing when to give his friend space to brainstorm — you get the idea that the two men were possibly the best duo Casa Bonita could’ve asked for when it came to its revival. Both men not only are fresh off a $900 million deal with Paramount, but also two of the savviest and most creative minds in comedy. They not only know the delicate art of satire, but they also prove to know quite a bit about what gets children engaged. It helps when Parker spends much of his “downtime” walking thru the labyrinthian layout of Casa Bonita, donning the wide eyes of a seven-year-old, imagining what would captivate him and make him never want to leave.

In present day, Casa Bonita is thriving. Good luck trying to book a reservation at an optimal time within the next month. Parker and Stone brought the same care and attention to this restaurant as they did The Book of Mormon. When you break down the origins of the Mormon religion, it’s pretty silly, isn’t it? What if someone took seriously a satire of such material? Of the same token, what if someone took this gargantuan, cockamamie Mexican restaurant and put some tender, love, care, and $40 million into it to make it sorta cool? I could see Parker and Stone getting the opportunity to snatch up the Denver Broncos in the future and subsequently turn them into the Savannah Bananas of football.

Directed by: Arthur Bradford.