Crystal Fairy

We find ourselves with a pair of singularly unlikeable people around whom this plot revolves. We watch a pair of Ugly Americans travel on Chile's Atacama Desert, in quest of a cactus that promises the ultimate hallucinogenic "high." Many of us in the 2013 Seattle International Film Festival audience are international travelers, so we were embarrassed by the behavior we saw on screen.

Director Sebastián Silva brings us two Americans and three very sympathetic (and HANDSOME) Chileans (played by his younger brothers) in this peculiar road trip. We had a mixture of English and Spanish (English captions) to move the plot along.

Here is the small cast:

• Michael Cera ("Juno" and "Arrested Development") plays a boorish, rude, self-centered hedonist from California. But, you may ask, did I LIKE him? Three guesses and the first two don't count... Cera usually plays shy, awkward young men that we automatically like. Not this time!
• Gaby Hoffmann ("Homeland" and "The Good Wife") is an airy fairy radical spirit who seems to find a lot of excuses to take off all her clothes. With her Frida Kahlo eyebrows and her existential blabber, she has her traveling companions in a state of chronic confusion.
• Agustin Silva ("The Maid") is one of the three brothers (playing three brothers) who are too polite to refuse this pushy gal from joining them on their outing.
• José Miguel Silva is another of those aforementioned brothers.
• Juan Andrés Silva makes the third.

As you might expect, the two Americans lock horns at every turn and have absolutely nothing in common. She is into community building, yoga, sharing and the Emily Post rules of drug use; he is just into drugs, drugs and drugs. Maybe you can tell I didn't like either one of them, even though they seemed to like them at Sundance! Sigh...

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This trailer is in Spanish with English captions!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYAXU2X2MzI 

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