Museum review - Gael Garcia Bernal`s student waster ballasts fun Mexican heist movie
(The Guardian Mexico)

Inspired by a real life robbery, this yarn about a pair of gormless students stealing priceless ancient artefacts is an entertaining and highly watchable thriller A deeply preposterous event from modern Mexican history has been turned into a watchable and good-natured dramedy-thriller from director Alonzo Ruizpalacios, who made a terrific new wave-style feature debut in 2014 with his freewheeling movie Güeros. Museum stars Gael Garcia Bernal as a feckless but mercurial student of veterinary medicine; Alfredo Castro is his disapproving father and Simon Russell Beale plays a cynical dealer in ancient artefacts.In 1985, all of Mexico was horrified when thieves were reported to have broken into the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City and stolen 140 priceless Mayan and Aztec objects; the news media solemnly reported that the heist was surely the work of a sophisticated international gang. Their patriotic outrage turned to embarrassment when the crime was found to be the work of two students, smart or reckless enough to have carried out the robbery but too stupid to have grasped that no one would wish to buy the goods. These objects were simultaneously priceless and worthless.The students are re-imagined as two criminal non-masterminds who are out of their depth as soon as they hit the water. It is no accident that one is obsessed with the cliff divers of Acapulco. Bernal plays Juan, and Leonardo Ortizgris is his hangdog college mate Wilson. At a Peter-Pan-ishly youthful 39 years old, Bernal carries off the role of the indolent student rather well: his face has something venal and self-pitying about it. He is very good at conveying a winsome, wounded sensitivity and self-pity.Juan slopes around the house, annoying his extended family and querulous parents who still want great or any rate respectable things from him: as Christmas approaches he is expected to dress as Santa to hand out presents at a family party - a responsibility first undertaken by his late ...