A Charming New Romantic Comedy on Amazon Prime Comes From a Very Unexpected Place

Música, Prime’s new rom-com about a young Brazilian man whose life is complicated by distracting music-based synesthesia, is unconventional in nearly every sense. This should be no surprise considering the surprising mind behind it: Rudy Mancuso, the former Vine star, who was one of the top-five most-followed people on the popular short-form video app before it was shut down in January of 2017. After that, Mancuso’s talents—the heart of which was always his masterful ear for music—were funneled into other popular projects, like social media clips and viral YouTube videos. Now, the internet virtuoso has applied his skills to long form as one of the first, if not the first, Vine stars to craft his own feature-length film. And … it’s surprisingly good?

Mancuso’s self-dubbed “anti-musical musical” is not only from his mind but also of his mind. In Música, Mancuso plays himself, plagued by a synesthesia—which Mancuso himself possesses—that causes him to hear rhythms in everyday sounds. Música’s Rudy lives with his mother (played by Mancuso’s real-life mother, Maria Mancuso, in the stand-out performance of the movie) who pressures him to date a nice Brazilian girl so he can fast-track his life to wedded bliss. Meanwhile, Rudy is torn: between his former, ill-fitting white girlfriend Haley (Francesca Reale) and Isabella (Camila Mendes), the Brazilian beauty from his predominantly Brazilian neighborhood within the Ironbound area of Newark, New Jersey. But being split between the two love interests also creates a potential divide throughout his entire life: Isabella is supportive of his desire to make his puppet show (which he is currently performing in the subway) work as a financially viable option, while Haley wants him to cut his losses and use his almost-finished degree to get a regular, stable job. Even more seriously, Haley wants to move to New York City, while Isabella is determined to stay in the Ironbound.

As pretentious as an “anti-musical musical” might sound, the label is fairly accurate. Though no one ever breaks out into song and dance, music exists throughout the journey, with everyday slogs and activities, like bus commutes and meals at a local diner, all turning into Stomp-esque scenes mimicking what Mancuso hears in his head. While some of these easily fit into the narrative context of the action—like one brief but lively samba number that Rudy imagines breaking out during a neighborhood fair—some are less conventional but still charming, like a musical romp of everyday sounds formed into Brazilian rhythms as Rudy enters the local fish shop, complete with flying fish tossed above his head. These are just a few examples of many moments in the movie where noise coalesces into something exciting—like the pulsing introduction to the hair salon his mother owns, where the Brazilian aunties working there pester him about his dating life to a melody and on beat.

For all that creativity and technical wizardry, the most impressive thing about Música is that, if you’ve been paying attention to Mancuso’s work, nothing present in the movie is entirely new.

Mancuso gained popularity through a variety of skits and other social media formats that run the gamut of comedic genres. He’s known for his jokes about being Latino, including ethnic takes on known characters, which resulted in the recurring “Hispanic Superman” and “Señor Grinch,” and his bite-sized puppet skits (known as Awkward Puppets) centered around a puppet named Diego. Though his humor is certainly of a 2010s strain—there are … a lot of iffy jokes about racism in his catalog—his best efforts are the brief but jam-packed videos about the human condition, chock full of flashy edits and set entirely to a musical rhythm that Mancuso and a collaborator would attempt to make in postproduction, foley artist–style, in one take.

Through it all, the one thing that united all of his endeavors is music. Whether he was playing the keyboard upside down, editing clips of himself playing the drums all over the world into a single video, creating the music for his own skits, or using multiple instruments and playing montages of popular movie scores, Mancuso’s astronomical musical talent—reminiscent of a comedic Brazilian Jacob Collier—is the heart of everything he has done.

For those who grew up with his musical escapades and puppetry, it’s all there in Música: the musical interludes, the overly showy editing, and, yes, even the beloved and hilarious puppets. Countless times in the movie, there’s a trick of the camerawork or a set piece that will make a Vine-head nod and say, “Ah, a Mancuso classic.” Perhaps nothing better exemplifies this than the lead-up to the climax of the story, which sees Rudy romancing both Isabella and Haley on a sequence of different dates that happens in one take of rolling backdrops and furniture, visible quick changes, and meticulously choreographed extras, as Mancuso walks through different sets on a single soundstage.

That said—as you might expect from a directorial debut of a Vine star who loves to max out the effects in the edit bay—Música does veer into the overindulgent, and even hokey, at times. The narrative is unnecessarily split into four different sections, with title cards naming them in music notation–inspired font: melody, dynamics, dissonance, and harmony. And the plot developments are punctuated with a recurring scene of a disheveled man in the subway, strumming his guitar and, to Rudy’s imagination, singing saccharine lyrics that detail where Rudy is in his life: “Change is not the answer unless you change the change, love is lovely when you’re loving but it’s time to rearrange.” And, if that weren’t cringe enough, those lyrics are even displayed on the walls and ceilings of the subway in a moment of hallucination.

So sure, Música stomps its way into some cheesy pitfalls, but it’s also an unusually refreshing rom-com. The central plot may be as old as time, but Mancuso’s twist on it and the ending (which I won’t spoil) are more realistic than what you’d typically find of counterparts within the genre. While this film may be especially beloved by my fellow theater kids out there, I think there’s at least something in here that can be appreciated by everyone: a beautiful view of the Ironbound, a relatable love story, or even, dare I say, a beat you can tap your foot to.