The Casa Bonita documentary ¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor! opened last week exclusively at the Alamo Drafthouse Sloans Lake before opening in more markets this weekend. I had a chance to attend a sold-out Friday night screening for an engaged audience at an appropriate location since Casa Bonita is a few miles down the road from the theater. After watching this entertaining and insightful documentary about two men on a quest to save a beloved memory from their childhood, you will want to visit Casa Bonita.
For some brief background for those unfamiliar, Denver’s iconic restaurant was shut down in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 closures, and the original owners sadly filed for bankruptcy in April 2021. A few months later, South Park showrunners Trey Parker and Matt Stone, former Denverites, bought Casa Bonita. It was the best news! The restaurant became well known in a classic 2003, which they appropriately called “The Disneyland of Mexican Restaurants,” and established itself as South Park canon, thus being known nationally.
¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!’s opening scenes set the table for a multi-course meal of nostalgia, first showing vintage TV ads that became infamous with the on-brand glossy pink font. Trey Parker and Matt Stone revisited it in 2012 (when “The Book of Mormon” was in town.) They are caught on video saying their dream of owning it one day became the ultimate manifest. Nostalgia is the focal point the doc leans a lot into, but it was light on history, maybe spending around five minutes with a brief explanation. I wish the documentary uncovered more of the history and featured its biggest fan, Andrew Novick, who visited over 300 times (and tried to save it before the South Park creators showed up.)
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A random guy is interviewed at a party, calling it “a money sink,” to be laughed at by the audience, but he is correct. The estimated costs of $6.5 million ballooned to over 40 million in the remodel. However, to Trey Parker and Matt Stone, it was the ultimate investment despite the problems they uncovered. It makes the doc unfold like an intriguing dark comedy where the remodel reveals many structural issues with the building. It is always fascinating to watch, even if you haven’t experienced the restaurant. There are countless back-of-house issues with clogged vents and the leaky pool. They had to retrofit an old building that was so damaged it almost collapsed. (“I better go to make some new TV shows,” they joked),
¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor! is about restoring childhood memories and two men’s mission to give Casa Bonita a “Hail Mary” of a second chance. There is a sudden moment in the doc when a camera filming the restaurant’s exterior unexpectedly falls after capturing a glorious shot; the scene feels like a metaphor for the surprise issues that arise. Some of my favorite moments are fantastic montages of the performance artists who rehearsed to create an immersive world, and I would have liked to have seen more of their creative process.
Maybe ¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor! is a PR puff piece to promote that Casa Bonita will fully reopen to the public on September 16th. I didn’t mind the doc since you discovered a lot about the remodeling process, which gave my rambunctious audience a lot of laughter and celebration. The reopening wasn’t appropriately communicated to the public, yet watching this documentary reveals how rough their reopening was. It makes sense why they stuck to the waitlist system with limited seating (so I’ve heard) to control the number of people who entered. Their waitlist model was very controversial for locals, but you could tell they had to fix issues weeks after they let people in, so they had to stick with it. (Their estimate is 400,000 visitors since reopening.)
Regardless, ¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor! is an ideal watch to see how Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s creative and entrepreneurial spirit drive their success. Plus, Casa Bonita looks so cool.
¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor! is now playing in limited theaters nationwide and will premiere on Paramount+ this fall.
