As a low-budget independent not necessarily intended for a broad audience, Casa doesn't have to bow to the middle-of-the-road multiplex appeal that handcuffs many SNL-pedigreed films. That works to the film's great benefit. full review

Ferrell hurls himself into the melodramatic, heavy-breathing telenovela style of acting. And surrounded by actors who know the genre and get the joke (Efren Ramirez from Napoleon Dynamite among them), this send-up works. full review

I tend to be amused by Ferrell in most circumstances, and the things I like about him - his bizarre sensibilities hidden beneath a mainstream exterior, his unwavering sincerity regardless of his characters' absurdity - are on display here. full review

I regard Casa de Mi Padre as an interesting but failed experiment. full review

Ferrell is an hombre loco. Mi gusta. full review

A product as cheap, empty and worth of a good beating as a pinata. full review

For a movie with basically one idea -- spoofing the telenovela -- "Casa" is determined to take it as far as possible. full review

Really, Casa de mi Padre is a skit blown up to a feature flick, amusing for a while until its welcome wears out. full review

As a full-length feature, "Casa" is simply a funny concept that starts to go stale around the 10-minute mark. full review

It's perfect for a short clip on FunnyorDie.com. Padded out to feature length, with a bunch of other slight and unmemorable laughs, it wears thin. full review

It's really strange, and it's really subtitled. full review

Is "Casa de Mi Padre" brilliant or pointless? Indubitably it's both, as Ron Burgundy might put it. full review

This very funny spoof of telenovelas and classic Mexican westerns is decidedly offbeat and absurdly daffy. full review

A lot of the film unrolls like wasted opportunities, placeholders between the cheesy musical interludes and ludicrous Peckinpah-esque violence. full review

"Casa de Mi Padre" demands that you not take it seriously, and for the most part that's easy to do. full review

The film feels ultimately hollow, perhaps because mocking soap operas is the comic's equivalent of shooting fish tacos in a barrel. full review

It's a solid short film stretched to Silly Putty thinness. full review

Ferrell, as he's done in Anchorman, Talladega Nights and Step Brothers, walks undaunted through the amiable absurdity, delivering his not-exactly-mellifluous espanol in earnest flurries, as the dialogue, and the bullets, fly. full review

About five minutes of its mercifully short 84 minutes would make a nice sketch on Ferrell's Funny or Die. full review

When you expect it to go in one direction, it goes off in another. Most of the time, that clever element of surprise pays off. full review