Rudy Mancuso (played by . . . Rudy Mancuso) lives in a slightly different universe than the rest of us. Where we hear the rumble of city life, Rudy hears rhythm and music. Where we see people going about their daily lives, Rudy sees syncopated choreography. And that’s the universe that Mancuso, as director and co-writer of MUSICA, has externalized for our delight and delectation. His is a vivid style that evokes both THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBORG in its stylization and anything by the Muppets in its blending of reality and fantasy into a whole that is both laugh-out-loud funny and deeply moving.
Rudy, a sweetly confused young man sporting a high-cresting pompadour of sculpted chaos (is it a metaphor? Why not!), is at a turning point in his life, which is always an excellent place to start. He’s about to graduate college with a degree in marketing that he doesn’t want. His WASPy girlfriend of four years Haley (Francesca Reale) has decided to call it quits because of his lack of clarity on his future. His excessive Brazilian mother, Maria (played by . . . Maria Mancuso), with whom he lives, is strong-arming him into finding a nice Brazilian girl with whom to fall in love, get married, and have lots and lots of babies. Rudy uses the word “pimping” and he’s not really wrong.
Alas, Rudy isn’t sure what he actually wants, but he’s sure that his passion for music and puppets has to be a part of it. With nowhere to turn for advice, or just a sounding board, but his best friend Anwar (JB Smoove), the fast-talking ecumenical owner of a food truck, and his no-nonsense puppet, Diego, Rudy’s dialogues with them become an excellent substitute for formal therapy. Even if what they advise is the opposite of what he wants to hear (or do).
Into Rudy’s life comes Isabella (Camila Mendes) with an ichthyological meet-cute for the ages. He doesn’t want a new relationship, but there’s something about Isabella’s comfort in her own skin and clear vision for her life that he finds irresistible. It doesn’t hurt that she’s a knockout without even trying.
The story, which is divided into different musical modes, progresses with background actors breaking into a production numbers, time and space condense into the cinematic version of a musical medley with break-away sets and exquisite timing, and a subway singer provides the Greek chorus to Rudy’s progress in sorting out his life. Even the hoary trope of trying to have separate dates with two different women at the same time and the same location takes on a refreshingly original vibe courtesy of a keyboard player who can communicate with (and comment on) Rudy dashing between women with increasingly fevered anxiety and decreasingly plausible excuses. Plus, never has cultural cluelessness been better represented than with Rudy’s disastrous dinner with Haley’s whiter-than-white family. It’s funny, it’s smart, and it will make you squirm (as it should).
Rudy’s obsession with music is in every frame of film, from the way he arranges his breakfast toast and sausage into an ersatz keyboard, to the thousand-mile stare Mancuso strikes when he slips into a world of pure music. Mancuso brings what is going on in Rudy’s head with an energizing sequence in which he “conducts” his surroundings with authority and insight that doesn’t make Isabella hear or see what he does, but does intrigue her into a bemused admiration.
As for the way Rudy mixes music and puppets, it is executed with a stroke of genius. Diego is as fully formed a character as any of the humans, and even if their conversations are essentially Rudy talking to himself, they have a well-balanced dramatic tension combined with a light absurdist touch that works fetchingly on many levels.
The same can be said of MUSICA as a whole. It uses its expect-the-unexpected idiom to an advantage that finds the truth in the ridiculous, and the ridiculous in the ordinary. All while simultaneously castigating and adoring its Newark location. And charming us with a hero caught between cultures, women, and life choices who just can’t make up his mind but is eminently enjoyable in his dithering.
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