Gods above, this is a depressing year for movies. Box office returns are down across the board and the mainstream releases are getting all the blame for it. This inevitably means that a lot of legitimately great smaller movies are getting lost in the shuffle. Here’s another one.
Bob Trevino Likes It tells the story of Lily Trevino (exec producer Barbie Ferreira), a young woman with enough emotional baggage to literally send a therapist openly breaking down into tears. No, I’m not joking, that seriously happens. It’s that kind of movie and Lily is that kind of character.
Long story short, Lily’s trauma begins at age four, when her mother got addicted to drugs and fucked off to places unknown. She proceeded to have a miserable childhood, due in no small part to her asshole father (Robert Trevino, played by French Stewart), who cuts off all contact from her in the opening minutes of the film. That’s a whole ‘nother long story. The upshot is that Lily tries to reconnect with her dad on social media and accidentally sends a friend request to a totally different guy with the same name.
Enter the eponymous Bob Trevino (exec producer John Leguizamo). He’s a construction manager and an amateur astronomer. His wife (Jeanie, played by Rachel Bay Jones) is a national scrapbooking champion, yes you read that correctly. The two of them are not very social people, particularly since a shared tragedy I won’t get into here.
What matters is that Lily reaches out to the wrong Bob Trevino online. And the both of them turn out to be such deeply broken individuals that they strike up an unlikely friendship. Hilarity ensues.
Right off the bat, this is a wildly convoluted setup. I’m getting a headache simply trying to think of how implausible it is that two such broken people in such a perfectly complementary way just happened to live within an hour’s drive of each other, and they just happened to find each other online, and this random DM out of nowhere wasn’t outright rejected as a catfishing scam, and that both people reached out to each other in sincere kindness and to mutual benefit. It certainly doesn’t help that almost all of the supporting characters and bit players are egregiously heightened, to further sell this as a comedy about two lonely souls stuck in an uncaring world. Any filmgoer would be forgiven for rolling their eyes at this notion and outright rejecting it as Hallmark Movie tripe.
But there are a number of reasons why it works.
To start with, it actually happened. While the film is heavily fictionalized, writer/director/producer Tracie Laymon (here making her feature debut) drew heavy inspiration from an actual online relationship, complete with a dedication to the actual Bob Laymon at the end of the movie. That authenticity and sincerity buy the film a lot of leeway.
To be clear, the film works on its own absurd terms in large part because the premise is delivered with such intelligence, heart, and charm. This is a genuinely impressive debut turn from Laymon, because everyone on both sides of the camera is working overtime to sell this concept. When it becomes obvious that both our lead characters are looking for something different (i.e. Bob wants a new friend and Lily wants a new father), it makes a timely and relevant statement about parasocial online relationships in a way that reveals so much about the characters and their emotional stakes.
I might further add that the characters lampshade how laughably improbable the central relationship is, as if to say “Yeah, this sounds ridiculous, let’s joke about it and move on.”
But more than any of that, I bought into this premise because I want to believe it. Honestly, I want to believe that two strangers can meet each other and help each other grow past their respective traumas. I want to believe that social media can provide some means of human connection beyond advertising algorithms and online scams. I want to believe that loneliness and depression are manageable problems far more common than any one person.
Even if all of this is tripe, at least it’s a comforting lie. Maybe even an uplifting and empowering lie. I don’t know what to tell you, folks. I’m really not that hard to please and I’m not made of stone.
Major kudos are due to the leading cast. French Stewart is a seasoned veteran character, and all those years of experience are put to good use in playing an irredeemable shitheel with such charm and nuance. John Leguizamo turns in an effortless performance, dynamic and poignant like nothing else I’ve ever seen from him.
Then there’s Barbie Ferreira, easily the most crucial reason why Lily’s development arc is so damn empowering to watch. Every time she cried onscreen, I was moved to cry right along with her. Tell me a greater compliment for an actor and I’ll use it.
Even in the supporting cast, we’ve got a few gems. My favorite example is Daphne (Lauren “Lolo” Spencer), who employs Lily as her live-in hospice aide. It’s an awkward situation, as Daphne is technically Lily’s boss and yet she’s also the closest thing that Lily has to a friend. Daphne easily could’ve been stuck as a mere plot device, but then she gets a showstopping monologue to state her case.
The character makes the point that she does in fact have her own health-related issues and mobility problems and emotional baggage, and maybe Daphne needs a friend just as badly as Lily does. Maybe Daphne also has her own thoughts about why and how and when to be kind in a cruel world. Maybe Daphne’s got her own way of helping Lily cope with her depression and daddy issues. Gotta be honest, I was genuinely impressed to see a one-dimensional supporting character claw her way back into relevance like that.
But then Lily gets into trouble later on and she doesn’t call Daphne for help. Seriously, what the fuck?
(Side note: I looked it up, and Spencer herself is an actual ALS patient. She’s a wheelchair-using social media influencer, just like her character. Major kudos for that casting choice.)
The weak link of the cast is easily Rachel Bay Jones in the role of Jeanie, who fails to make an impression beyond a couple of scenes. But those two scenes are freaking dynamite. And no, I don’t care that her scrapbooking obsession is an improbably hamfisted way of exploring the movie’s themes, the actors and filmmakers sell it.
For all its flaws and quirks, Bob Trevino Likes It is delightful. It’s such a perfectly balanced dramedy that I found myself laughing out loud in one scene and then openly crying in the next. Heightened and contrived as it is, this is still a powerful modern fable about life and loneliness in the age of social media. I raise a glass to Tracie Laymon, for turning in such a spirited and effective feature film on her first try.
Barbie Ferreira alone is worth the cost of admission for this one. Definitely give it a look.