Common Sense Media Review
By Jose Solis
,
based on child development research. How do we rate?
Argentine dramedy with cursing and heavy drinking.
Parents Need to Know
Why Age 14+?
Any Positive Content?
Where to Watch
Videos and Photos
Therapy Done Right
Parent and Kid Reviews
What's the Story?
THERAPY DONE RIGHT follows Ulises Verón (Ricardo Darín), a celebrated Argentine psychoanalyst who has lost faith in his profession and now practices what he calls exposure therapy, which reaches well past his consulting room into his patients' lives. Meanwhile, his daughter Paula (Antonia Bengoechea) works as his assistant and would love to be closer to a father who seems unable to create emotional links with anyone. Then one day Martín (Diego Peretti), a bestselling novelist who cannot write a word unless he's blackout drunk, bursts in demanding help. Ulises takes on the case. Each man slowly discovers what the other one wants.
Is It Any Good?
Two of Argentina's finest actors turn a comedy about therapy into a study of people who mistake control for mastery. "Life without distress is much better," Ulises Verón tells a patient early in Therapy Done Right, which is hilarious coming from the one man in the film least able to follow this advice. Director Hernán Goldfrid starts with a comedy about personality and slowly builds a Hitchcockian pastiche, down to composer Roque Baños's score and the overhead shots lifted from Vertigo. Everyone in it is losing control while believing they're masters at it.
The exposure therapy premise is very funny, funnier still once the film points out that Argentina has more psychoanalysts than any country on Earth. Emanuel Diez's screenplay goes flat in places, since some twists arrive long after a viewer has seen them coming and the stakes stay low for stretches. Then it turns, revealing how dark the whole thing has been all along. Ricardo Darín and Diego Peretti, two of Argentine cinema's most reliable leading men, have unusually good chemistry. Watching them act off each other is the greatest pleasure the film offers. Darín plays the straight man to Peretti's manic energy, something close to Steve Martin and Martin Short with Peretti as the eccentric, and his casting carries its own joke, since he starred in the Argentine version of In Treatment.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about how Therapy Done Right treats therapy itself. Where does Verón's exposure therapy cross from treatment into control, and what should anyone be able to expect from the person treating them?
Martín drinks instead of writes. How do people use one problem to avoid facing another, and what would it take for him to deal with his writer's block directly?
Verón needs to be right more than he needs to help anyone. What does the film suggest about men who cannot admit a mistake, and who ends up paying for it?
Movie Details
- On DVD or streaming : October 16, 2026
- Cast : Ricardo Darin , Diego Peretti , Inés Efron , Antonia Bengoechea
- Director : Hernán Goldfrid
- Studio : Netflix
- Genre : Comedy
- Topics : Family Stories ( Dads ) , Friendship
- Character Strengths : Communication , Compassion , Teamwork
- Run time : 98 minutes
- MPAA rating :
- Last updated : October 26, 2026
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