As most people commenting here, I stumbled on this film while channel-hopping late one night, and I was pleasantly surprised. Sadly, that doesn't mean that Fandango is a good film, just that it was a cut above normal 3am-midweek fare, but in Mexico, the competition is rank awful.
Fandango is a breezy coming-of-age roadmovie that barrels along at a decent pace, which ticks the boxes and holds the interest but slips too often into cliché and simplistic juxtaposition to deserve the over-heated praise I see in the rest of the comments. Just because a movie slips through the net, doesn't automatically make it a 10 star attraction! And yes, Kevin Costner does a decent enough turn, which is to say he isn't toe-curlingly bad as he becomes in his later films, but how far can you praise an actor for being bearable, for once? It's interesting to see that the movie was born from a shorter work, as this is how it comes across - a series of set-pieces that are internally too long and not strung together convincingly enough. Better editing would have made a more coherent story come together, as it is we are left with four engaging if one-dimensional characters forced to dance from one scene to another to the tune of the director's hard-ground organ.
In summary, bright and breezy and yes, occasionally reflective, but unbalanced and unconvincing.
Fandango is a breezy coming-of-age roadmovie that barrels along at a decent pace, which ticks the boxes and holds the interest but slips too often into cliché and simplistic juxtaposition to deserve the over-heated praise I see in the rest of the comments. Just because a movie slips through the net, doesn't automatically make it a 10 star attraction! And yes, Kevin Costner does a decent enough turn, which is to say he isn't toe-curlingly bad as he becomes in his later films, but how far can you praise an actor for being bearable, for once? It's interesting to see that the movie was born from a shorter work, as this is how it comes across - a series of set-pieces that are internally too long and not strung together convincingly enough. Better editing would have made a more coherent story come together, as it is we are left with four engaging if one-dimensional characters forced to dance from one scene to another to the tune of the director's hard-ground organ.
In summary, bright and breezy and yes, occasionally reflective, but unbalanced and unconvincing.