The Crime of Father Amaro: Critic Reviews

The real crime is the way that the movie turns Gael Garcia Bernal ... into a backwater Freddie Prinze Jr.

The film's most disconcerting element is its confusing mixture of satire and melodrama.

A lurid but timeless reminder that the bureaucracies and regulations of organized religion have nothing to do -- indeed are often at odds -- with living a God-ward life.

Works itself into a lather of passion, anguish and tragedy, but there's more to this Mexican movie than straight soap opera.

Lavishly, exhilaratingly tasteless.

Carrera's filmmaking is more workmanlike than stylish, but Padre Amaro is richly character driven and, for all its insolent, grotesque humor, straightforwardly humanist in its psychology.

The film has soap-opera elements ... but it is also a serious critique of the Catholic Church and of societal corruption.

Feels shrill, simple and soapy.

Overall, this is a juicy movie but certainly not a trashy one.

A melodrama, a film that doesn't say priests are bad but observes that priests are human and some humans are bad.

Eventually moves and stirs you, even if it often resembles those steamy Mexican TV dramas/soap operas called telenovelas.

Just turn on Univision or Telemundo some night and see the same thing without the highfalutin pretensions.

The story is timeless, but when adapted to the modern age, it makes for a wrenching film -- never preachy or sentimental, and refreshingly non-judgmental about the fundamental and contradictory issues it raises.

Bernal's transformation from naive priest to tortured adulterer to hard-nosed careerist is riveting.

Take away the controversy, and it's not much more watchable than a Mexican soap opera.

For all of the criticisms of the Church in El Crimen del Padre Amaro, Carrera is quick to defend the basic humanity of his characters.

It's not hard to see why Mexican audiences are lapping this up.

Nothing more than a stifling morality tale dressed up in peekaboo clothing.

The source of fascination is observing how the characters develop and understanding the underlying influences that affect every action and decision.

Despite the melodrama, Crime makes for an engrossing film.

The film is ... determined to treat its characters, weak and strong, as fallible human beings, not caricatures, and to carefully delineate the cost of the inevitable conflicts between human urges and an institution concerned with self-preservation.