¡CASA BONITA MI AMOR! - Mark Reviews Movies

¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!, MTV Documentary Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 12, 2024

The story of ¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor! seems like a niche one. It's all about a kitschy Mexican restaurant, also serving as a kind of amusement park, in a suburb of Denver, which quickly rose to local fame after its opening in the 1970s and garnered regional attention in the ensuing years. That would be the end of the story of any such place, without much in the way of expansion or franchising over the decades, but then, something odd happened.

The local hotspot played a key role in a 2003 episode of "South Park," and with the animated show's growing cult following, the restaurant gained a new life and place in popular culture. That came to pass because Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the show's creators, had origins in Colorado, with both growing up there and the duo later meeting in college in the state. Parker and Stone's fame has its own strange tale, which might be part of the reason the two felt particularly attached to Casa Bonita when the restaurant's parent company filed for bankruptcy in 2021, after suffering losses from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Here, then, is a documentary that would seem to have only a specific audience: either those who know the restaurant itself or those who know about it from "South Park." Coming from someone who has some experience with both, that is definitely the main appeal of director Arthur Bradford's film, but it's a better and more compelling tale than its specific roots and focus might suggest.

It is, broadly, the story of a childhood dream coming to unlikely realization. That's the case for Parker, at least, who has fond memories of going to Casa Bonita as a kid during its heyday. A clip of the climactic moment from that "South Park" episode gives one an idea of what that experience must have been like for a young Parker, as one of the main kids on the show runs through the restaurant trying to take in everything the place has to offer in a short amount of time. There's a creepy cave to explore, as well as cliff divers to watch, and yes, endless sopapillas to devour. The sequence makes Casa Bonita look like a place out of a dream.

After Parker and Stone found a new route in their creativity by way of a stage musical, the duo and cast decided to visit Casa Bonita in 2012, and the instant reaction is of the smell: beans and chlorine. Stone wanders through the place with some ironic detachment, but the glimpses of Parker's face show obvious disappointment—with the food, the deteriorating décor, and duct tape covering up holes in the well-trodden carpet. Childhood memories have a funny and unfortunate way of being completely dismantled in an instant with just little touches of reality.

All of this is getting to the point, which has Parker and Stone deciding to buy Casa Bonita after the company that owned it declared bankruptcy. Initially, they just want to save the place from closing down, because it's an institution important to their lives and careers, as well as to so many others in Denver and beyond.

The budget to renovate, based on the size of the place and some general notions of what needs to be repaired or replaced, starts at more than $20 million. That's a lot of money, obviously, but Parker and Stone, who plan to pay for it out of their own pockets, can afford it because of their success. Then, the pair hire a construction manager, who takes a tour of the whole building, finding dead pigeons on the roof (A hawk has found a home on a statue atop a tall tower), air ducts filled with dust and dirt, and the room where the divers exit the pool in order to shower. He quickly dubs it "the death room," because of the lower clearance and pipes blocking the way out of the pool—not to mention the old electrical work that's inside the room, which would have had a steady stream of soaking wet people.

This should give one an idea of the course of this story, as the problems with the building increase, the budget skyrockets, and, while Stone laughs off each new issue with that same detachment from his visit to the restaurant a decade prior, Parker becomes obsessed with, not only returning Casa Bonita to its former glory, but also making it closer to the place from his happy memories as a kid. That would seem impossible, and despite complete overhauls of the infrastructure and attractions and the menu, the issues keep coming. Meanwhile, Parker continues to hit walls of little things not meeting up to his expectations, because he's a perfectionist in a project that was destined to be imperfect.

That angle alone makes this film more than just the story of a massive renovation project and, of course, an advertisement for Parker and Stone's latest business venture (The two appear on camera as subjects but seem to have no financial or creative investment in or attachment to the documentary, so there is that). Watching Parker stalk around the incomplete restaurant, finding problems he wasn't even looking for while becoming more and more dejected as opening day approaches, is surprisingly affecting. We know how much this project means to him, no matter how many jokes he tells in the process, and no matter how niche this story may be, ¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor! lets us see and feel that significance, too.

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