Casa de Mi Padre

LITTLE ROCK — Back when he was the linchpin of a particularly talented Saturday Night Live crew in the late ’90s, Will Ferrell was known as the go-to guy, someone who would do any character in any sketch at any time.

Beloved by the show’s writers and actors alike, he was equally adept at being a straight man or the comedic hub in the piece. As a film star, he has maintained a similar appetite for variety.

This particular return to big-screen comedy, Casa de mi Padre, is a bit of an experiment. He’s without many of his loyal repertory cast, and the entire film is in Spanish with English subtitles.

Ferrell plays Armando Alvarez, the son of a Mexican rancher. Armando lives to work on his land, hang with his fellow rancher buddies, and pay homage to his explosive father, Miguel (Pedro Armendariz Jr.), whose favored son, Raul (Diego Luna), returns to the ranch after a long absence along with a stunning beauty, Sonia (Genesis Rodriguez), whom he intends to marry.

Armando is also dogged by memories of accidentally shooting his mother when he was a young child. When it turns out that Raul has gotten into the drug trade and is waging a territorial war on the local drug baron, Onza (Gael Garcia Bernal), Armando must decide what he can do to protect his family and his brother’s bride-to-be.

Director Matt Piedmont appears to be up for just about anything, whether it actually makes any sense within the context of the film or not.

At different times, the movie plays a bit like a hamhanded telenovela, with actors staging horrifically overthe-top performances. Then it veers into a spoof of a Sergio Leone-like Western; then it’s a trippy experimental short, and then a more standard Ferrell comedy vehicle in which he’s completely unaware of being the biggest dope in the room.

The film also revels in assorted broad comedy bits, with a host of ridiculouslooking fake backdrops, visible spliced edits, absurd animatronic animals and a slew of intentional continuity miscues all of which are pretty hit and miss.

This kitchen-sink approach is the film’s undoing. So many silly and nonsensical things happen that there’s nothing to hold together all its disparate elements other than Ferrell’s presence. And though his command of conversational Spanish is impressive, his character is little more than a watereddown, south-of-the-border version of the stock Ferrell comic protagonist.

In its best moments, the film throws in enough amusing idiocy to keep you entertained; at its worst, it grows increasingly tedious as it goes through the motions of its over-simplified plot. It would have made a killer 15-minute Funny or Die piece.

Casa de Mi Padre

77 Cast: Will Ferrell, Diego Luna, Gael Garcia Bernal, Genesis Rodriguez, Efren Ramirez, Pedro Armendariz Jr. Director: Matt Piedmont Rating: R, for violence, language, some sexual content and drug use Running time: 84 minutes

In Spanish with English subtitles