Review: Musica

Overview

Música, a coming-of-age romantic comedy by writer, director and star, Rudy Mancuso takes us on a fun, musically driven journey as Rudy finds love with Isabella (Camila Mendes) all while navigating his career and his Brazilian culture.

Our Take

I got to tell you I’ve been through Newark Penn Station, PATH, and Newark Liberty a number of times and I’ve never seen Rudy Mancuso’s puppet show. The straight-up musicians, bible thumpers, and homeless people you see all of the time, but I honestly can’t recall a time when I just was passing through and say anyone do a puppet show. That’s not to say that I think Rudy’s semi-biopic Musica is a lie or anything, but I would’ve liked to have seen some Awkward Puppets as I was soggy-sprinting towards the NJ Transit terminals trying to catch my ride.

In any event, former Vine star Rudy Mancuso has managed to reinvent himself everything the opportunity prevents himself. While a number of Vine-stars have long lost the limelight left behind by one of Twitter’s cooler, ahead of its time, toys, Rudy has turned himself into much more of a prolific social media star on the likes of YouTube and Instagram as well. Now, the puppeteer checks in with his first feature-length film Musica, directed and written by Rudy and streaming on Prime Video.

The feature-length follows Rudy as he attempts to figure out a post-collegiate life from Rutgers that doesn’t exactly with his studies nor does his yearning for a post-moving out of his mother’s(portrayed by Mancuso’s real-life mother Maria) house line-up with exactly what his mother wants (mainly for him to settle down and get married). All of this is further complicated by his diagnosed synesthesia though it isn’t quite clear if this was an actual diagnosis from a doctor or a common-day psycho-semantic episode not unlike the hundreds of thousands of people in the world who constantly self-diagnose themselves with all sorts of mental illnesses. In any event, it comes across almost similarly to that of an episode derived from A Beautiful Mind whenever Russell Crowe’s math spidey-senses go crazy. Fortunately, this is a movie written by a millennial so not only is Rudy’s disorder not a problem, rather it’s an aphrodisiac for both beautiful girls and JB Smoove living in Newark. We also get a somewhat cliched seasoning of rich white people (in Newark?) vs Brazilian youth gags that are cleverly written and provide for good laughs.

In fact, most of the dialogue of Rudy’s adventure is excellent save for the climax where some of the wheels start to come off in the mushier moments where I’m not so sure Rudy wasn’t just borrowing from similarly cliched efforts like The Fault In Our Stars or one of the thousands of other films released in the 2010’s just like it, but when his voice isn’t in the dialogue it feels a bit inauthentic. When Rudy’s voice IS in the direction, the script, etc., the results are breathtaking in almost nostalgic Broadway Jonathan Larson meets Edgar Wright type way where it’s required that you watch scenes with your entire focus. In fact, I shudder to think how good Musica could’ve done with a small indie theatrical run not unlike what the updated West Side Story  or In The Heights did though I’m sure Amazon/MGM took notice of what those films did at the box office and opted for the safer route. Whether that was the right move or not, I’m not sure, but with how good the finished product came to be I would’ve given it a shot. In any event, if you give Rudy Mancuso’s Musica a shot you won’t be disappointed.