Nineteen-year-old slacker Rico Juan Collado leads a pretty aimless life, smoking weed, selling home-made juice and liquor cocktails called Nutcrackers on Orchard Beach in The Bronx, and hanging out with friends.
His mother Andrea Yohanna Florentino and sister Sally Nathaly Navarro both consider Rico to be basically useless and are not shy about telling him so, but despite the ear-splitting shouting matches that pepper the film, their home is also a place for tenderness and celebration. Things change when, out of the blue, Rico announces that his year-old girlfriend Destiny Destiny Checo is pregnant. Things take a melancholy turn as Destiny becomes more proactive, more critical and more aware of what having a child will actually involve.
He tries to shed his slacker status by finding regular work as a cleaner, but spends a night in jail and starts to drink too much of his own concoction. In one of the more touching scenes, Rico tries reaching out to his own long-absent father, without success: this is the role model that Rico never had. The multiple scenes featuring family fights feel raw and authentic, sometimes painfully so, because they seem part-improvised: but at times they drag on too long, a sign of a larger problem with pacing and rhythm.
What brings it all back from the edge are the performances, especially that of Collado. He brings to Rico an engaging stoner charm, remaining defiantly chilled even when the world seems to be falling apart around him. Other performances, some of them from non-professionals, are persuasive, heightening that fly-on-the-wall feel.
The film is artfully shot by Rufai Ajala entirely on fixed camera, to interesting effect. Often the angle is so low, as though the camera was hidden, bringing an extra layer of documentary realism to the scene.
