This is like a shoebox, there's some good stuff inside but the container itself is fairly banal. What this movie has inside is a stellar cast and great directing. Penelope Cruz explodes the role of the passionate film director and Oscar Martínez (the actor, not Oscar Martinez the accountant) & Antonio Banderas are perfect in the roles of the actors she's directing. Beyond that, the film's actual directors do a decent enough job of providing a fresh angle on a rather generic product. Because the box that these thing comes in is a traditional satire of the movie making business that, despite some cute jokes, covers the same cliché material (egotistical actors, media hype, wacky directors...) as other films (_Adaptation_, _The Producers_, _Hail, Caesar!_, the excellent _Tropic Thunder_). I enjoyed Official Competition and laughed out loud more than once, but also nodded off a moment toward the end.

this was so brilliantly done, as a director it was cracking me up....

Wonderfully absurd film, and much more fun than I had expected. Banderas who is instructed to pronounce 1 sentence with 3 different emotions in it, and he also manages to do it damn well! Awesome. Penelope Cruz lying on the floor, shouting random words through a vacuum cleaner hose. How do you come up with it. The 'game' between the 3 protagonists (Lola, Félix, Iván) is at the cutting edge. Félix who alone values the glitz and glamour of the film world and cherishes his prizes and enjoys his expensive sports car, where Iván does not want to take advantage in any way of any privileges he has as a famous actor... these actors together, with the slightly insane Lola directing, this can't go wrong... right?

For me this is the best movie of the year 2022 yet.

A good comedy, a bit slow but with targeted irony and an interesting criticism on competition at work and on stage. A film to be seen.