Girl in Progress

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Should you go watch it?

Yes. Specially if you liked Spanglish.

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Spoiler free review.

Let me first tell you how I arrived to this movie. For months I've been dying to see Brave with no luck. When it was released, my kids went to their grandparents' for the summer. They watch it there and told me not to watch it since they wanted to watch it again with me, so I waited. Then, when I went to pick them up, we went to the movies but with their cousins (who had already seen it too) so we saw Batman instead.

When we were back, we went to the movie theater again but the family vote overruled my attempt to watch Brave (or Batman again) and we went for Ice Age 4 instead. When I tried again, I had multiple 2x1 passes so I took my neighbors' kids with us and one of them had just seen Brave so we watched Paranorman instead.

This weekend everything was perfect for Brave... nothing else that my kids would want to see was showing and we headed there. The problem is that we arrived late and all the seats to see Brave were taken by the time we arrived (and I didn't buy them beforehand because of the 2x1s). So I asked the cashier what else was good for children and she said "Girl in progress" is for 12 year olds up. The name in Mexico is something like "Training mom" which sounded like "Training Dad" which is the Spanish name given in Mexico to The Game Plan which my kids loved so I bought them without a clue what the movie was about.

Let me start by saying that the Spanish name for the movie is misleading since:
1) It's not really about a girl training her mom.
2) It's nothing like The Game Plan.
3) It's not really suitable for kids.

But let's review the movie: I really liked it. I did suffer a little since my 8 years old daughter was watching a movie where "losing virginity" is not only mentioned but... (won't spoil it).

So it's not really a comedy or a kids' film but the funny thing is that both my daughter and son loved it (not sure why) and it was in English!

The movie is really about a girl with a somewhat irresponsible mom. The kid decides to "become of age" by forcing herself through common adolescent events.

The acting of both is great and the story, although not 100% new is really touching. Both my wife and I cried (which means that you really get into the movie), but that probably can only happen to parents. Did you cry in Spanglish? Almost same scene here.

This is a movie obviously written by a female author since the protagonists are all women and the men are side stories, dumb, jerks or just feeling-hiders that need women to open their eyes. But this is not a bad thing, it is a very nice turn from the latest common type of movies.

Note-worthy is the fact that Eugenio Dervez has again a somewhat important role that is not really funny but interesting (go rent Under the same moon if you don't know what I'm talking about).

So, go watch this movie instead of The Expendables 2 and wish me luck on watching Brave!