Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Tell Me When’ on Netflix, a Mexican Rom-Com That Lands Bland

Tell Me When is a Mexican rom-com about what happens when a bummer-introvert and an upbeat extrovert get together, a formula that dates back to the Stone Age. Of course, that doesn’t mean said formula is impossible to freshen up with good writing and characters, so let’s keep an open mind, shall we? The film is the directorial debut from Gerardo Gatica, who’s a credited producer on two Netflix movies — crummy comedy Ready to Mingle and one of the best international features in recent memory, I’m No Longer Here — so let’s see what he comes up with here.

TELL ME WHEN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Shh shh, everyone be quiet, lights off — SURPRISE! Will (Jesus Zavala) just got promoted to junior associate at whatever financial institution he works at, and his grandparents are throwing him a party. He really needs the social interaction, because his boss is constantly pestering him and he’s always staring at his phone. We see his bedroom — he still lives with grandma Ines (Veronica Castro) and grandpa Pepe (Jose Carlos Ruiz) — and it’s lined with diplomas and certificates and shelves full of things like “genius” trophies. He has no friends and has never had a girlfriend. His grandfather (Jose Carlos Ruiz) takes him out to the desert to give him a special gift and tell him how he and Ines met, but Pepe left the gift at home — then falls to his knees. The next scene is a funeral.

A year passes, and Ines comes across the gift, a little notebook with Pepe’s guide to how Will should get a damn life: Leave Los Angeles and go to Mexico City for a while. Pepe listed all kinds of stuff to do, such as getting drunk on mezcal, going to museums, falling in love, stuff like that, all the stuff most people do but Will hasn’t done because all he does is work. A family friend sets him up with an apartment rental and a quasi-guide in the form of Dani (Ximena Romo), who happens to be an uptempo, attractive, confident, heterosexual woman who’s the understudy for the star of a major stage production, but soon becomes the star herself.

So Will participates in a series of comic scenes in which he gets drunk on mezcal and gets mugged, etc. He also ends up hanging out with Dani and her pal Beto (Gabriel Nunciio) a lot, and eventually starts experiencing those strange things known as feelings while he and this lovely young woman visit Mexico City’s loveliest library and such. This and that happens — you can probably guess what they are — and Will ends up wandering the streets while “Crazy” by Patsy Cline plays on the soundtrack. So will they or won’t they or what? Out damn spoiler, out!

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Although Tell Me When isn’t as wacky as other films of its ilk, it’s still a lot like too many rom-coms to mention. Just watch Always Be My Maybe on Netflix instead.

Performance Worth Watching: Romo’s screen presence is wonderful. Significant. She has many elevating qualities. She’s funny and empathetic. The movie would be DOA 10 times over without her. Someone get her a better script, please.

Memorable Dialogue: Beto points out that Will exists, but not much more: “Dani is cute, smart, sweet. Brilliant. You are… in Mexico. You’re here, that’s good.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Tell Me When isn’t terrible. But it isn’t particularly good, either. Its biggest issue is our protagonist, who has a significant charisma problem. I understand that Will is a bland cookie who needs to get a little sugar, and that’s the point of the movie, but the character strains credibility by never saying or doing anything interesting, having no quirks or eccentricities or interests and essentially lacking any sort of inner life. Does he feel grief for the loss of his grandfather? Regret for interacting with his phone more than with people? Does he struggle with the loss of his parents, who died when he was a baby? He shares the latter point with Dani and Beto, and it feels like a shrug, a manipulation to make the other characters feel sorry for him. Dani should forego giving him her number and instead offer one for a good psychotherapist, because he sure seems ready to fill his inner void with the first attractive woman who raises an eyebrow at him, and if we’ve learned anything from analyzing the folly of hundreds of silly people in hundreds of rom-coms, it’s that this is an unhealthy situation.

All this is the mark of one significant thing: the Underwritten Character. Dani is also similarly sketched, but where Romo attempts to fill in the significant cracks with charm, Zavala seems to be at a loss for what to do with a character who does little more than sit at a desk and maybe smile once in a while. It’s in our nature to want to see Will experience happiness instead of his usual flatline existence, and yes, that means maybe living vicariously through him or Dani as they smoosh their lips together.

Not that we get the basic satisfaction of any significant consummation, mind you. Gatica might be aiming for something more realistic than the stuff of the usual exaggeration of human behavior that comprises so many romantic comedies. Yet the film seems too weak in its writing, too tonally featherweight to delve any deeper into the nature of infatuation and love. It foregoes ridiculous situations and heavy emotional moments, but rarely lands a solid joke or cultivates any moments of any dramatic heft. (Gatica flirts with magical realism in a sequence where a raincloud follows Will around wherever he goes, and the film really could use more such creative flourishes.) Tell Me When ultimately asserts that people who are boring need to be less boring while being quite boring itself.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Tell Me When admirably aims for restraint in a field of goofy, overstated rom-coms, but lands firmly in the bland.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream Tell Me When on Netflix