(Never mind that Ernesto understands only bits and pieces of what he says.)įairly early on, Ernesto recognizes that Sean is gay. By the second day Ernesto is on Sean’s daily payroll, however, the weatherman is bringing the day laborer on excursions away from the work site - hiking in the hills here, row-boating on a lake there - mostly so Sean has someone to talk to. Right from the start, Sean tries - maybe too insistently, maybe even presumptuously, but he tries - to make Ernesto feel at ease and respected by treating him as an equal. Sean speaks little Spanish, and Ernesto speaks only slightly more English, but they communicate efficiently enough for Ernesto to at least begin the painting job.Īnd then things get a tad more complicated. Ordered to take a sabbatical by a news director (Wendi McLendon-Covey, milking a brief, thinly written role for all it’s worth) who’s worried about tarnishing the station’s “brand,” Sean finds himself with too much time on his hands in the home he used to share with his departed lover (whose departure, of course, is the cause of his frazzled mental state).Įager to paint over the spot on his deck where he and his gone-away companion once positioned a potted tree, Sean hires more or less at random Ernesto (Alejandro Patiño), one of the men seeking work, any work, outside a hardware store.
#Papi chulo review professional
Sean, played with an admirable fearlessness by Matt Bomer, is the weatherman, a usually chipper professional who has an on-camera meltdown - something more than a crying jag, but not quite a cry of anguish - while forecasting another day of hellish heat in and around L.A.
#Papi chulo review tv
In “Papi Chulo,” a scrupulously low-key and unassumingly ingratiating dramedy about the friendship forged between a thirtysomething Anglo TV weatherman and a middle-aged Mexican migrant day laborer, Irish-born writer-director John Butler (“The Stag,” “Handsome Devil”) turns an outsider’s eye to the dynamics of interrelationships that cross socioeconomic divides in L.A., and makes it clear, without hammering home his point too insistently, that one can intelligently and entertainingly illuminate universal verities about basic human needs by focusing on specific details of place, class, and sexual orientation.
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