Barbie Ferreira shines in tearjerker Bob Trevino Likes It
From when Barbie Ferreira first appears on screen, she grabs it with both hands and never lets go.
I didn’t know Barbie Ferreira, star of Bob Trevino Likes It, but I wasn’t looking in the right places.
She’s well-known among followers of Vice channel, or Teen Vogue, apparently, as a hugely influential model with a message about body positivity.
As I say, I had no idea. I just know that when she appeared on screen she grabbed it with both hands and never let go.
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Bob Trevino Likes It is based on a true story in writer-director Tracie Laymon’s life. Only partly based, I hope.
We meet Lily Trevino (Ferreira) having dinner with the world’s most deadbeat dad, Bob.
I’m not even sure that Laymon realises quite how awful she’s made Bob – a dreadful, needy person who’s only interested in himself, but requires Lily’s help to date attractive women. Women love families, he says.
Spot the irony. After a lifetime of this, Lily decides to try counselling.
But her life is so tragic she reduces the counsellor to tears.
So, after a particularly bad time with Dad… he doesn’t want to talk to her and blames her for everything in his life, Lily finds herself on the internet, browsing through the various Bob Trevinos.
And she finds one, with no followers, not even a photo. So, she sends a random post. Are we related? That sort of thing.
And she gets a reply. This Bob – middle-aged, married, though he and his wife Jeanie have had some problems – is played by the great John Leguizamo, an actor who for years has played spiky Latino types, on this or that side of the law.
Here he plays something else – quiet, self-effacing, a genuinely decent guy.
And this Bob starts writing to Lily, who writes back telling him all the things she’d want to say to a real father.
Bob’s wife Jeanie is suspicious. This whole thing has all the makings of a scam to her.
Lily, incidentally, works as a home-help for a wealthy woman, Daphne, confined to a wheelchair.
Daphne has no hesitation in speaking her mind about the perils of meeting creepy, middle-aged men on the internet.
And yet, against all odds, Bob and Lily hit it off, despite initially having little in common.
She likes basketball, he likes astronomy. Lily’s looking for a father figure. Bob’s still traumatised at the death of his baby son.
Bob Trevino Likes It is sweet. It’s almost a little too sweet. It’s very hard not to feel manipulated in the face of two vulnerable, traumatised people.
While you wish Lily and Bob well, you can’t help dreading what might happen to them.And of course there’s the regular reappearances of the other, bad Bob.
And yet… and yet. Cheesy it is, but like its obvious counterpart, New Zealand tear-jerker Tinā it’s almost impossible to remain dry-eyed at the end.
Director Laymon writes a heartfelt and emotional story – it’s even dedicated to the real-life Bob – but it’s the two leads who deliver the package.
Leguizamo has played over 150 feisty curmudgeons in the movies over the years. He deserves one kind, decent chap. And opposite him, Ferreira earns every tear she gets – on screen or off it.
Bob Trevino Likes Itis the name of the film, and judging by the internet reaction it’s getting equal support. Torrents of likes and very few thumbs down – possibly all from deadbeat dads.
