Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Technoboys’ on Netflix, a Tonedeaf Boy Band Satire from Mexico

Goofy-ass boy-band music-biz spoof Technoboys (now on Netflix) is the debut directorial effort of one of Mexico’s biggest comedy stars, Luis Gerardo Mendez, who also stars as a has-been boy-band singer desperately trying to stage a career renaissance. Mendez broke out with hit Mexican comedy The Noble Family , and has made a name for himself in TV series ( Narcos: Mexico , The Resort ), a variety of Mexican films ( Cantinflas , Club de Cuervas ) and supporting roles in American productions ( Me Time , Murder Mystery ). He co-directs Technoboys with Gerardo Gatica Gonzalez, from a script by Alexandro Aldrete, and they try to bullseye the sweet spot between social satire and broad comedy – with mixed results.

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The Gist: We open with a spoof of the inane morning talk shows featuring hosts spewing canned banter about the hot topics of the day. You know, the ones you try to avoid at all costs. It’s a segment about Technoboys, a five-piece boy band who were a pop-music phenomenon in the mid-to-late ’90s. You know the story: They were hot and then they weren’t and they split up when capitalism had had enough of them. And where are they now? If you said I bet they’re somewhere being comically pathetic , you’d be mostly right. They were led by Alan (Mendez), who we see performing songs from his new solo album in front of a sparse crowd in a mall food court. So sparse, you can pretty much hear you want fries with that? overtop his droopy musical numbers. Misery. Total misery.

Alan can’t help but wonder WHA HAPP’N’D. Rival boy band Spicy Roots persists, obnoxiously, and the ex-lover he still pines for, Melena (Karla Souza), is a superstar pop icon married to Alan’s former manager. And here he sits, sad and alone, whining that nobody likes his new material. I mean, the Spicy guys are shameless greased-up beefhunks, and Melena gets a fresh coat of body paint so she can have a “cinnamon” skin tone and pretend to represent repressed people of color, but Alan doesn’t see that. He just dwells on the fame and fortune that slipped through his fingers.

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But he gets a break when his manager George (Gabriel Nuncio) discovers that the copyright on the Technoboys name wasn’t renewed. So Alan decides it’s time to cash in on a reunion, although his real motive is to attain the type of status that, he believes, will help him win Melena back. So he rounds up his former bandmates and lies that Technoboys has a slot on a lucrative revival tour: Babyface (Luis Rodriguez Guana) is now a balding desk jockey. Leo (Joaquin Ferreira) is a new-age hippie guru who apparently has magical powers (we see him teleport elsewhere with a poof). Freddy (Fernando Bonilla) is in a wheelchair now. And Charlie is now Charlis (Daniela Vega). When Leo poofs off to wherever, Alan recruits young Technoboys superfan Jay (German Bracco), who knows all the dance moves by heart, to replace him. Now, dear reader, do you think hijinks ensue? NO SPOILERS! But yes. Hijinks ensue.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping mined some very similar material for many, many more laughs.

Performance Worth Watching: Souza’s take on the superficial-phony celebrity dances on the periphery of being insightful, but the satire in this movie never takes root.

Memorable Dialogue: “Nobody wants to listen to my Bon Jovi-influenced material!”, Alan whines when confronted with the crushing public disinterest toward his solo work.

Sex and Skin: Just enough sideboob for Peter Griffin to notice.

Our Take: Technoboys is a ramshackle thing, a collection of too many characters tossed into silly scenes in need of a judicious edit. Moments drag on too long, allowing jokes to go splat when they should crackle and spark. As for the story – well, it’s a major challenge to be even the slightest bit involved emotionally when its protagonist, Alan, is such an unlikeable idiot. Does he have a single redeeming quality? He lies and manipulates without hesitation, he’s driven by selfishness and ego, he longs for a woman who’s unavailable and also a moron (perhaps they’re destined to be together, on second thought), and he doesn’t seem to be particularly talented. There’s comedy to be mined from such a character, but the material and Mendez’s performance don’t generate enough laughs to overcome the dearth of pathos we have for the guy. We spend enough time with him – the movie’s a saggy 109 minutes long – that our only rooting interest is to get to the end of the movie so we can feel the relief that occurs when we stop spending time with him.

Granted, one doesn’t watch silly spoofs like this for insight into the human condition. A hearty supply of brisk, well-timed comedy goes a long way toward endearing us to a movie populated with idiots. What Technoboys settles for, though, is an unfocused, toneless spew: Wearisome drug sequences (we get a molly bit and ayahuasca hallucinations), toothless jabs at the vapidity of the pop music culture and business, and, most prominently, a smattering of un-P.C. jokes poking at toxic masculinity, gender identity, racial politics, cultural appropriation and the like – you know, pick a hashtag, any hashtag! Characters deploy the occasional taboo slur, and it’s hard to tell whether it’s for shock value or said characters are just insensitive pissants propped up by a movie that’s trying to say something about “woke” culture. And then we’re rewarded with a sequence in which multiple characters puke, one by one. I can’t tell if this movie is trying too hard or just doesn’t give a damn about anything, so it just sprays the horizon with bullets hoping to hit something, anything. It just flails in a rather dissatisfying manner.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Some people really love Popstar . I was underwhelmed, but compared to Technoboys , it’s a masterpiece.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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