You know that guy who is cute and lovable but also a walking trainwreck? Maybe you dated a few in college, or maybe you’ve seen one on the subway talking up a woman who seems way too impressive to waste her time with him. That’s basically Vine star and YouTuber Rudy Mancuso’s character, also named Rudy, at the start of his feature debut, Música—a musical comedy about self-discovery, manifestation, and, above all, the perils that await anyone who lets other people make their decisions for them.
Rudy (the character) is charismatic as hell and, as we discover before too long, he’s an exceptional musician with a pretty funny idea for a puppet show. (Even if his mom won’t stop calling his puppet, Diego, a “doll.”) The problem is, he’s still stuck in the “too many brilliant ideas, too little time or money” phase of his artistic career. From the outside, he mostly looks like a mess. But that doesn’t stop him from snagging two intelligent, beautiful women and foolishly trying to date them at the same time.
Música, which premiered this March at SXSW and makes its Prime Video debut on April 4, is about as openly (semi-)autobiographical as a movie can get. Mancuso has not only named his character after himself, but he’s also cast his real-life mother, Maria, to play his film’s busybody Brazilian matriarch. He has a puppet show in real life, and just like the movie’s Rudy, he also has synesthesia—which, in his case, means his brain turns random noises into music. And while it’s unclear if Mancuso himself ever lived out the love-triangle dilemma seen in this film, he did wind up dating his co-star, Camila Mendes, in real life, which explains the firecracker chemistry behind every sly smile they share on screen.
On one hand, synesthesia sounds cool as hell; I’m guessing that many of us would love to know what it’s like to be able to smell a color or taste a name. Unfortunately for movie-Rudy, he also cannot turn this condition off at will—which means that when his girlfriend, Haley (Francesca Reale), tries to break up with him at a diner, he’s too distracted by the sounds of trays clanging and brooms sweeping to notice. Somehow, that doesn’t stop him from resuscitating things with her and ensnaring a new girl at the same time. When things get complicated, Rudy talks things out with himself through Diego, who usually comes prepared with a lot of snark (and, sometimes, a surprising appetite for Cheetos).
Enter, Isabella (Mendes)—a free spirit who, unlike the studious Haley, is not busy plotting out her entire future. She works at a fish market in Rudy’s Newark neighborhood, Ironbound, and when Rudy sees their vibrant community through her gorgeous brown eyes, he suddenly understands why she’d never leave for anywhere else. Does he really need to make it big in marketing and move on up, or is everything he ever needed already right here, staring him in the face with an intoxicating smile?
This is where Rudy’s “does not have his shit together”-ness unfortunately rears its ugly, indecisive head. A mature, self-respecting guy would recognize that he and Haley are not right for one another and resist the temptation to get back together with her when she extends an olive branch during marketing class. Instead, Rudy wanders back into a situationship with Haley (and even comes home with her to meet her incredibly stuffy WASPy-with-a-capital-“W” family) while also letting things play out with Isabella. By the time Maria stumbles into her son’s messy, musical love triangle at her favorite restaurant, he’s already ruined things seemingly beyond repair.
Música, which Mancuso co-wrote with American Vandal executive producer Dan Lagana, is most enchanting when it immerses itself in Rudy’s sensory experience. The film frequently makes music out of Rudy’s surroundings, a compelling trick that gives the film its irrepressible rhythm. Montages of Rudy tap-dancing through his life with two girlfriends offer viewers a taste of the beauty and chaos that intermingle in his mind, while Haley and Isabella offer two very different reactions to feeling stuck outside the show. Isabella might be content to go with the flow, but Haley can’t stand it.
That said, there’s something a little frustrating about Haley and Isabella’s characterization. In both cases, the women feel too singularly defined by their relationship with Rudy. Haley can’t deal with his scattered attention, and that dynamic seems to establish her entire personality: she’s also too stuck-up, too normie, too fixated on securing her future to see the forest for the trees. Oh, and her family sucks. Reale does her best to humanize the caricature she’s been given, but at a certain point, it becomes hard to understand why Rudy ever dated her in the first place.
Isabella, meanwhile, is everyone’s dream girl, because she seems to have very few needs of her own and is mostly completely captivated by Rudy and his big imagination. To top it all off, she, like Rudy, is Brazilian. Mendes, who has quickly become one of Hollywood’s go-to cool girls, was basically born for this role, and she’s as magnetic as ever. When things do finally get rough between Isabella and Rudy, however, she gets to show off a more vulnerable side. Curb Your Enthusiasm star J.B. Smoove also lingers on the fringes of this love story as Anwar, Rudy’s friend who spends most of the movie doling out side-splittingly terrible life advice from his food truck.
In the end, everyone—especially Rudy—understands that he really went wrong by failing to understand himself as a human being. It’s a truth that even Rudy’s felt friend, Diego, can see: If you don’t know who you are, you’ll never know what you want, and you’ll live out your life as somebody else’s puppet. You can only chase your dreams (and your dream girl) if you know them well enough to recognize when they’re standing right in front of you.
