Parents' Guide to Susana and Elvira: No Plan B

This film is genuinely entertaining and worth noting for what it represents for the Latin American romcom. Susana and Elvira: No Plan B grew out of a blog turned web series, a rare example of female-led romantic comedy coming out of Latin America, a genre Hollywood has long treated as its own. The film even jokes about that legacy directly, with a character noting that romantic comedies ruin people's lives. It works fine for newcomers too, since the plot reintroduces Susana and Elvira without leaning on outside knowledge of the web series. The central friction between the two friends takes a while to fully surface, but that slow burn actually feels true to how real friendships fracture.

González and Moreno have chemistry so convincing their decades-long friendship never needs explaining. The film's best scene is a midpoint karaoke sequence built around Vikki Carr and Ana Gabriel's "Cosas del Amor," rich with cultural specificity. The two romantic subplots, involving the venue owner and the groom's manager, add mostly texture, but both actors make the detour worthwhile, and the shift between Bogotá and the Colombian Caribbean coast gives the film a glossy, globetrotting feel. Valentín (Emmanuel Restrepo) stays in gay-best-friend cliché territory, functional but nothing more. Sharp, funny, and dramatic, the film lands close to Sex and the City or an early Kate Hudson romcom, a register Latin American cinema rarely gets to play in.