Las Pildoras De Mi Novio (My Boyfriend's Meds)

Las Pildoras De Me Novio (My Boyfriend's Meds) is, in fact, a hard pill to swallow. Camil, who has a reputation for making potentially awful characters/storylines likable simply thanks to his charm, does the same for Hank, who seems like the perfect boyfriend until viewers learn about his various conditions. While comorbidities with various mental illnesses can actually exist -- for instance, a person with ADD can also be diagnosed with OCD and depression because of overlapping symptoms -- it's farcical to believe that one person could have a dozen or more diagnoses overlapping at the same time. Of course, the film is meant to be a comedy, and Hank's many illnesses are played for comedic effect. But with a film that's ultimately meant to be about not judging others, having compassion for people with mental illness, and realizing that everyone needs and deserves love, it's tough to reconcile those themes with humor that's at the expense of neurodiversity, with symptoms of mental illness being exaggerated far beyond what it takes to make them "funny."

The fact that Hank feels distressed by misaligned pencils and cracks in the floor due to intrusive thoughts and fears is actually accurate for many people with OCD. And acknowledging the fundamental illogical nature of those fears could have been good material in an intelligent script. But that's not this film. Las Pildoras De Mi Novio doesn't fully examine how OCD can develop and how it can present itself in several different and complex ways. Ditto for Hank's other diagnoses -- his Tourette syndrome, for example, is used for comedic effect the most, with him blurting out obscene statements. Yes, Tourette syndrome can cause some people to say obscene words. But it also includes a lot of different symptoms that can affect people in different ways, not just through shouting curse words. Finding humor in all of these conditions has diminishing returns, especially when Jess continually uses harmful terms like "crazy," "insane," or "nut job" when referring to Hank's illnesses. Hank's mental distress is the film's main source of "humor," but the movie makes fun of physical disabilities, too, including Jess' co-worker Chase's (Brian Baumgartner) lisp, which is portrayed as making him drool to the point of comic ridiculousness. Las Pildoras De Mi Novio clearly wants to teach its audience that everyone deserves happiness, but it spends far too much time making fun of people with mental or physical differences for that message to stick.